{"id":865,"date":"2011-09-25T07:25:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T14:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=865"},"modified":"2011-09-29T07:28:14","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T14:28:14","slug":"ridiculing-easily-established-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=865","title":{"rendered":"Ridiculing easily established facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned in my column of Sept. 18 (find the full version, as usual, at https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=858<\/a>) that the mainstream media, and even to some extent the Tea Party, seem to be doing everything they can to marginalize GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul.<\/p>\n

This despite the fact that, interestingly enough, The Washington Post was forced to admit this week the latest Rasmussen poll shows Paul running 1 point behind Barack Obama, within the sampling error, \u201cif the election were held today.\u201d<\/p>\n

By this measure, Rep. Paul is now running second among GOP hopefuls, bested only by Mitt Romney, who still leads the incumbent by several percentage points. Rick Perry of Texas, who\u2019s not too sure about that \u201cevolution\u201d business, trails.<\/p>\n

But how often do you hear anyone refer to \u201cthe two GOP front-runners, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul\u201d — the two men who coincidentally finished one-two in the Nevada GOP caucuses four years ago, fair warning from a neighboring state about John McCain\u2019s electoral chances, had anyone paid attention?<\/p>\n

(For the record, no, I don\u2019t believe the Grand Old Party, which has striven since they tapped Eisenhower over Taft to become the party of \u201cDemocrat Lite,\u201d offering us a \u201ckinder, gentler,\u201d socialist kleptocrat slave state, is likely to nominate Rep. Paul, unless and until lynch mobs are stringing up Federal Reserve bankers from lamp posts.)<\/p>\n

But \u201cThe mainstream media keeps pretending Rep. Paul \u2018reveals himself to be some kind of \u201cnutty professor\u201d when he keeps talking about our Monopoly-money \u201cdollar\u201d and the cabal of private bankers known as \u201cThe Federal Reserve,\u201d\u2019\u201d I wrote last week.<\/p>\n

In the latest example, Alexandra Petri, a member of the Washington Post\u2019s editorial page staff, columnized last week that \u201cgold bug\u201d Paul is so wacky he \u201cactually named his son Rand,\u201d and further that he \u201cbelieves that a silver dime can pay for $3 (worth) of gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieves\u201d? Do we generally refer to something being \u201cbelieved\u201d when its accuracy can be easily ascertained with a few clicks of the keyboard?<\/p>\n

Go to http:\/\/www.kitcosilver.com<\/a>. Here you can easily ascertain that silver was selling, when I wrote this column, at $39.68 per ounce. (It had dropped close to $30 in the Sept. 22-23 panic; it will likely be up again this week.)<\/p>\n

Since a pre-1965 silver dime contains not a tenth-ounce of silver, but only .072 ounces, this means you can take a silver dime to any pawn shop or coin store and get something in the range of $2.85 in current, inflated Federal Reserve notes or cupronickel sandwich coinage for that little piece of silver, which you can then use to drive across the street to the nearest gas station and buy $2.85 worth of gasoline, give or take.<\/p>\n

Yes, the buyer may pay you a few pennies less — his profit margin. But since silver was a bit higher when Rep. Paul made his statement, how does his \u201cbelieving\u201d these facts make him some kind of \u201cwacko\u201d? In fact, what does it tell us about any adult not living in a group home that they somehow find this statement odd? Do the staff of The Washington Post really pretend not to know that the Federal Reserve has inflated the dollar until, less than 50 years later, a 1964 dollar bill will now buy what you could have bought in 1964 for three copper cents — while you\u2019d be lucky to buy a battered old silver dollar, today, for anything less than 30 current greenbacks?<\/p>\n

Back on Sept. 18, I wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul is not a serious candidate,\u201d opined Deborah Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sept. 9.<\/p>\n

Her proof? \u201cDuring the debate, he advocated privatizing air traffic control and said that prescription drug regulation \u2018does as much harm as good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, that proves it. Why, the next thing you know, he\u2019ll be proposing we privatize railroads and the oil industry.<\/p>\n

The FDA exists primarily to protect the monopoly of the big drug companies against upstart competitors who can\u2019t afford to jump through the bought-off bureaucrats\u2019 million-dollar hoops, threatening to jail people who advertise the established health benefits of vitamins and other natural herbs and supplements while providing cover for who knows how many toxic nostrums.<\/p>\n

And challenging this set-up proves you\u2019re \u201cnot serious\u201d?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I wrote, a week back. Anyone wishing further amplification of this point is encouraged to check out the latest from health writer Bill Sardi at: http:\/\/lewrockwell.com\/sardi\/sardi185.html<\/a>, where we learn that according to Peter Barton Hutt, former chief counsel for FDA (1971-75) and senior counsel with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, \u201cThe primary thrust of the FDA\u2019s anti-supplement efforts has been to maintain that dietary supplements are unnecessary for any person who eats properly, \u2018a feeling that has continued to persist within the agency up to this very day,\u2019 says Hutt. This is in the face of the fact that the government\u2019s 5-A-Day program to eat fruits and vegetables has miserably failed to reduce mortality rates for heart disease and cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor decades the FDA applied pressure and attempted to gain greater authority to regulate the supplement industry,\u201d Mr. Sardi reports. \u201cFinally, then Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., pushed through Congress the Vitamin-Mineral Amendments of 1976, which further reduced FDA flexibility in regulating dietary supplements, says Hutt. Frustrated and bending to the will of the people, in 1979 FDA revoked all of the regulations it had propagated in 1972.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cThe current challenge dietary supplements face is worse than any before,\u201d Mr. Sardi reports. \u201cThe FDA now seeks to implement a new guideline that would force all supplements dating back to the passage of the 1994 DSHEA to undergo toxicity and birth defect studies, a requirement that would (be) so expensive it would quash the entire industry, require more than $50 billion of testing which represents the entire estimated profits produced by the industry for 20 years, a guideline … that would surely eliminate thousands of products from retail store shelves and place hundreds of thousands of Americans workers into unemployment lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FDA has aimed a death blow at the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned in my column of Sept. 18 (find the full version, as usual, at https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=858) that the mainstream media, and even to some extent the Tea Party, seem to be doing everything they can to marginalize GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul. This despite the fact that, interestingly enough, The Washington Post was forced to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,22,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-media","category-medicine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-dX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}