I've seen it all before... and that's why ultimately this country is GOING to collapse... note I didn't say when, and I didn't say how, I just said it will ULTIMATELY collapse.
Without a major transplant of brain cells and common sense, which is as common as hen's teeth anymore...
They've been outlawing farm chemicals for the last 40 years, one after another, and on the shakiest of psuedoscience. Now I'm not a huge fan of them, but I DO realize the need for them, even if some are overused. How many PEOPLE have died from malaria from mosquitoes which had been well controlled with DDT prior to it's ban?? Now we find that the studies linking DDT to thinning bird's egg shells was all bogus...
They outlawed CCA treated wood. Oh, we MUST protect the children!!! Why some companies are making playground equipment from treated wood, and arsenic leaches out of the wood and dries on the surface, and gets on kid's hands and clothes and leaches into the dirt little Johnny eats while he's sitting under the swings... the amount was
almost undetectable, but it's an ENORMOUS threat that must be outlawed!!! Never mind that even trace amounts of arsenic are actually GOOD for you, just not ELEVATED levels, and for little Johnny to get even a TRACE dosage he'd have to suck on the lumber of the playground equipment for about a week straight, or eat enough dirt to leave a foot deep hole! Now we get "Yella Wood" with whatever that corrosive crap is in there and no telling what that does...
They outlawed peregoric... I used to get 'the earps' as a kid and would be wretching a puking, and I'd get a spoonful of peregoric from mom and BOOM I'd feel great! No more wretching and heaves... that stuff worked GREAT! Nope, can't have that... why for pity's sake it's a NARCOTIC!!! I never got hopped up on the stuff and didn't know anybody who did-- and everybody'd been using it for about 150 years... Nope, gotta go! Gotta protect everyone! Now you get stomach virus and spend a day and a half wretching your guts out in the toilet, which gets harder every year as I get older (and fatter
)
Then they outlawed Merthiolate and Mercurachrome... Handiest stuff we ever had on the farm... get cut or scratched deep working on fence or machinery or thorns/vines or whatever, Grandma always whipped out the Mercurachrome... Grandpa carried a bottle of Merthiolate with him everywhere he went! Stuff burned like the dickens when you put it on the wound and turned your skin orange, but it was a great antiseptic and kept the cut/scrape/scratch from getting sore... Oh, but heavens to betsy it's got MERCURY in it!!! WE"LL ALL DIE!!! Nevermind that everybody'd been using it for 100 years or so, and it worked and worked well, IT HAS TO GO NOW!!!! I kept all the bottles from Grandma's and I still use the stuff and will until it's all gone...
Then they outlawed creosote. Well, technically the utility companies can still get creosote, because it's about the best long-term wood preservative there is, and it would bankrupt the utility companies having to replace all the rotted wooden power poles if they COULDN'T get creosote poles... but nobody can have creosote fence posts anymore!!! Nevermind that the regular treated posts rot off in 5 years, and creosote lasted at least 20 years, and nevermind creosote has been used safely for 100 years... NO IT MUST GO!!! I used to take a terrific cough syrup called "Creomulsion". Once you got past the idea of drinking a slug of BLACK cough syrup that tasted like a light pole with a little mint oil stirred in, it was great. I got some BAD bronchitis one year and I coughed for six months straight, never COULD get rid of it, and finally my Grandmother convinced me to try Creomulsion and it was gone in a week! Dried it right up and got rid of it... and I used the stuff ever since. Then one day I went to the store to get a bottle, which was packaged in a plain white box with the old 1880's type 'banner script' arching across the face of the box "CREOMULSION" and when I got home and opened the box, lo and behold it wasn't black! I opened the bottle and tried some and the formula had been changed to a cheap knockoff of Vicks 44 or something. Never worked worth a darn either...
I see this stuff time and time again, and it's all knee jerk stupidity. I can go to Mexico and buy ANY of the stuff I just mentioned, but because some idiot somewhere decides it's not safe, we can't have it. Just more demonstrated stupidity. JMHO! OL JR