Foolish right-wingers
We were right about CFLs, gas stoves and covid
Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons say, “Foolish Earthlings.”
Lefties say foolish right-wingers.
CNN reported, “A federal agency is considering a ban on gas stoves, a source of indoor pollution linked to childhood asthma.
“Richard Trumka Jr., a U.S. Consumer Product Safety commissioner, set off a firestorm this week by saying in an interview with Bloomberg that gas stoves posed a ‘hidden hazard’ and suggested the agency could ban them.”
Sounds goofy, but the story said later, “A December 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that indoor gas stove usage is associated with an increased risk of current asthma among children. The study found that almost 13% of current childhood asthma in the U.S. is attributable to gas stove use.”
So far that one study in a little-known academic journal is the only study the media has cited. Who knew so many political reporters subscribed to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health? Maybe it has centerfolds.
Whether gas stoves cause asthma is outside my ken. What I do know is the press immediately denied Trumka was planning to do what he was planning to do.
PolitiFact leaped in and assured the public, “The White House is not banning gas stoves and ovens.” The same lefty fact-checkers who once said you can keep your insurance was absolutely true, just said you can keep your gas stoves.
They think there is a war on gas stoves? Ha ha ha.
Foolish right-wingers.
But Fox reported on February 2, 2023, “Internal Biden admin memo shows it was serious about banning gas stoves before public uproar.”
The story said, “Trumka noted that the two largest U.S. cities, New York City and Los Angeles, had already banned gas stoves in new construction ‘for health and inequity reasons’ and because gas stoves ‘strongly contribute to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions.’”
So Democrats want to ban gas stoves because of asthma. Strike that, inequity reasons. No, strike that, climate change!
Nik Popli of Time magazine wrote, “This isn’t the first time a culture war has targeted a common household appliance. Republicans have been venting their frustration over federal energy-efficiency standards for more than two decades — including over the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that forced U.S. consumers to switch to more energy-efficient light bulbs.”
Conservatives warned at the time that the replacement — Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs — contained mercury.
On July 31, 2007, Dr. John Balbus, Chief Health Officer at Environmental Defense Fund, assured one and all that there was no problem with CFLs.
He wrote, “Despite some alarming news reports, you don’t have much to worry about. If a CFL breaks, some of the mercury that’s contained in the bulb will evaporate into the air. How much? It’s hard to be certain, but one study looking at long tubular fluorescent bulbs found that over a two-week period, only 17% to 40% of the mercury in the bulb evaporated. The rest remained stuck in the bulb. Roughly one-third of the mercury that evaporated did so in the first eight hours after the breakage; the rest seeped out slowly over the remainder of the study period.”
Foolish right-wingers.
Balbus was the expert on CFLs, just as Tony Fauci was the expert on coronavirus.
15 years later, lighting manufacturer TCP reported, “You’ve seen the headlines. CFL light bulb bans started making their way through state legislatures last year, and California has become the second state to sign one into law. Vermont’s light bulb ban passed in May, forbidding sales of CFLs as of February 2023. California’s phase-out begins in January 2024.”
Gee, why is that?
TCP reported, “Because CFLs and linear fluorescent lamps — aka those long, slender tubes in overhead fixtures — contain the known toxin mercury, the CFL light bulb ban is framed as a protection for both waste workers and the wider environment.”
So we switched over to LEDs. I cannot wait to find out what the flaw is in LED so lefties can ban them as well and replace them with wax cylinders that provide light as they burn down. Remember, the answer to the question what did socialists use before they used candles is electricity.
Foolish right-wingers keep being right.
On December 2, 2022, Lauren Cahn of the Huffington Post wrote, “12 Conspiracy Theories That Actually Turned Out to Be True.”
Topping the list were the government stealing dead babies.
Foolish right-wingers.
She wrote, “Laughing at crazy conspiracy theories is good fun — until they turn out to be true. Take the conspiracy surrounding the Project Sunshine, for example. In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. government commenced a major study to measure the effects of nuclear fallout on the human body.
“The government was stealing parts of dead bodies. Because they needed young tissue, they recruited a worldwide network of agents to find recently deceased babies and children, and then take samples and even limbs—each collected without notification or permission of the more than 1,500 grieving families.”
After President Wilson’s stroke, the conspiracy theory was his wife actually ran the country.
Foolish right-wingers.
Cahn wrote, “The public didn’t learn about the stroke for months, during which time his wife, Edith Wilson, was making most executive decisions. Despite Mrs. Wilson claiming that she acted only as a steward, historians who have analyzed the Wilson term in office confirm that for well over a year, Mrs. Wilson was effectively president.”
The Biography Channel called her the first woman president.
Next on Cahn’s list was mind control. Cahn wrote, “Conspiracy: The CIA was testing LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs on Americans in a top-secret experiment on behavior modification.”
Foolish right-wingers.
She wrote, “The program was known as MK-ULTRA, and it was real. The CIA started by using volunteers; the novelist Ken Kesey was one notable subject. But the program heads soon began dosing people without their knowledge; MK-ULTRA left many victims permanently mentally disabled.”
There is more to the story. On September 9, 2019, NPR did a story, “The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief.’”
The story said, “MK-ULTRA, which operated from the 1950s until the early '60s, was created and run by a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. Journalist Stephen Kinzer, who spent several years investigating the program, calls the operation the "most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control."
“Some of Gottlieb's experiments were covertly funded at universities and research centers, Kinzer says, while others were conducted in American prisons and in detention centers in Japan, Germany and the Philippines. Many of his unwitting subjects endured psychological torture ranging from electroshock to high doses of LSD, according to Kinzer's research.”
The project stopped. The government will never try that again.
Then there was the claim that the Dalai Lama worked for the CIA.
Foolish right-wingers.
It was another wild and crazy conspiracy theory, except for the part where the CIA had the Dalai Lama on its payroll. Cahn cited a September 15, 1998, story in the Los Angeles Times, “CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in ‘60s, Files Show.”
The story said, “For much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama, according to newly released U.S. intelligence documents.
“The money for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama was part of the CIA’s worldwide effort during the height of the Cold War to undermine Communist governments, particularly in the Soviet Union and China. In fact, the U.S. government committee that approved the Tibetan operations also authorized the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
“The documents, published last month by the State Department, illustrate the historical background of the situation in Tibet today, in which China continues to accuse the Dalai Lama of being an agent of foreign forces seeking to separate Tibet from China.”
Then there is the conspiracy theory that the government spies on you through your laptop.
Foolish right-wingers.
Alexa Erickson, another Huffington Post writer, wrote on November 8, 2022, “In 2014, the FBI ran its largest cyber operation to date, in which scores of webcam hackers in more than 12 countries were arrested.
“The program, called Blackshades, gave users access to ‘photographs and other files on the victim’s computer and a record all of the keystrokes entered on the victim’s keyboard,’ according to a report. It allowed them to steal passwords to the victims’ online accounts, and even activate the victim’s web camera to spy on them, all in secret.”
Wow, thanks for the tip, FBI.
The story also said, “Apparently, there’s some evidence to suggest that the FBI has also hacked into people’s computers in order to access their webcams for surveillance.”
This explains a September 23, 2016, story in Engadget, “The FBI recommends you cover your laptop's webcam, for good reason.
“There’s a thriving market for illicitly obtained stills and video.”
It turns out the smeller was the feller in this case.
Then there is the conspiracy theory that government health care will kill you.
Foolish right-wingers.
Katie Spalding on December 30, 2022, wrote, “If your grandpa started talking about how the government promised him and a bunch of his buddies free healthcare if they agreed to have their health monitored for six months, only to actively kill off about one in six of them over the course of 40 years by denying access to cheap and life-saving medication that could cure their otherwise fatal sexually transmitted infection, you might think he’d gone a little loopy in his old age.
“Unless you had heard of the Tuskegee Experiment, which did exactly that.”
Lefties now call venereal disease “sexually transmitted infection” because calling it VD scared people into not having risky sex.
Speaking of government health programs that will kill, when covid broke out in February 2020, conservatives said the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, Red China.
Foolish right-wingers.
Vox debunked that crazy conspiracy theory on April 29, 2020. Its story nipped it in the bud, saying, “A Wuhan lab studied SARS-related viruses. But there’s no evidence it discovered or was working on the new virus.”
There is just one thing wrong with that assertion. There is evidence.
On May 24, 2021, Vox placed a disclaimer at the top of the story: “Since this piece was originally published in April 2020, scientific consensus has shifted. Now some experts say the lab leak theory warrants an investigation, along with the natural origin theory, and information in this article may be out of date. For our most up-to-date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, visit Vox’s coronavirus hub.”
Once again, the media is quick to denounce conservatives as crazy who embrace conspiracy theories. Today’s crazy, kooky conspiracy theory too often turns out to be tomorrow’s absolute truth.
The irony is the media offered the craziest conspiracy theory in American history that President Trump colluded with Putin who fixed the 2016 presidential election for The Donald.
Now for today’s totally scientific poll.
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Enough with black history month
“… and replace them with wax cylinders that provide light as they burn down.”
That is awesome!!
Trumka Jr. Is the son of a union thug - former head of United Mine Workers and the AFL/CIO. I am sure Jr. is extremely knowledgeable about consumer safety and didn’t get his position because of his family name.
I joke. Sorry.
When I first saw his name tied to that story about gas ovens, I immediately knew the story was true. Trumka’s name gave the plan away.
Like the other non-conspiracy theories discussed here, never believe the gubment story. the gubment is not led by the best and brightest (I HATE that term), but by wanna be dictator bullshit artists.