For the liberals and Leftists who think more regulation is always preferable comes this story passed along from BlondeSense, where the not-so-faint-of-heart can read a righteous, backside-ripping rant about the mind-numbingly stupid new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which is going into effect next month. This abomination of safety-at-all-costs legislation threatens to destroy millions of artisans and cottage businesses because its expressed intent is to force every manufacturer of items kids under 12 could touch to have their products undergo expensive testing for lead content.

No, this isn't the conservatives pulling another hare-brained stunt; this is the swirling squad of so-called "safety" advocates who always pretend their latest jackboot attack — be it a law, a regulation, a law-enforcement push they want — is "for the children," as if no one but they could possibly be enlightened about what is best for all those too young to tell these control freaks to shut their pie holes and find something else to do with their boots.

Here's another disastrous consequence of this abomination of a law hated by God. Do the geniuses who pumped out this bucket of legislative drivel realize how many girls make bracelets, rings, hair pretty things, and other hand-made items for their friends? It is a bonding and communication mechanism among some cliques, and these hand-made items might now constitute "hazardous" materials contraband.

And do those legislation-writing, regulation-waggling bores realize how many elementary school children are, to this very day, taught arts and crafts, which they make for themselves, for their friends, as gifts, or as items to sell?

And do these somewhat upright-walking fists of political correctness have the slightest clue as to how many camps, after-school programs, children’s church groups, and other facilities of the kind do arts and crafts for distribution to friends or even for fund-raising? The dried flower arrangement garlands and tiaras I saw being sold last Summer by a church youth group at a town festival would very likely fall under this legislation because they were made from a variety of materials, including real and fake flowers and leaves, string, painted metals, and beads. O the horror of these young purveyors of toxic toys of mass destruction! Veritable Osama bin Ladens, the lot of those little lead-spreaders: they and the adults who make hand-crafted toys might as well don their turbans and grow their beards out; the jig is up for domestic toy terrorists!

Ah, yes, before the acidic sarcasm goes too far, and returning to the issue in its potential consequences, let me just mention the problem of what is going to happen to untold millions of toys, recent and antique, that pass through estates. Would they, by some stretch of a regulator's mind searching for something to take away the loneliness of the sparse neurons, be banned as "hazardous"?

No used stuff for you, young man; just be happy with that brain-rotting PlayStation Portable so you can learn your target acquisition and neutralization skills. No used stuff for you, young lady; just watch your music videos of females cooing and gyrating like sex is the only thing females are worth.

Let us not enforce existing laws and apply them to the glaring, pulsating problems of our lives and times; let us not lock up failed regulators who have allowed massive fraud in our financial system and toxic poisons in our imported foods. Let us instead make new laws so we can hire legions of additional losers who cannot function in the real world to stand in god-like judgment over those who cannot afford battalions of lobbyists to advocate for them, skyscrapers full of lawyers to protect them, and "objective" experts to hawk their rot.

Yes, this is your very own Dark Wraith ranting, here, in all his usually subdued, paleo-conservative glory. The legislators, the regulators, and the advocates howling for one more rung after another of jackboot stomp masquerading as necessary and needed oversight can kiss my narrow backside.

And as for "the children," they need someone to teach them how to say, "BITE me."

The Dark Wraith is available for K through 12 seminars on the subject.

Just as the deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control admits little progress in the fight against food-borne illnesses, the Food and Drug Administration is announcing that at least 23 people in 14 states have contracted salmonella from several cereals sold under the Malt-O-Meal name.

That's right: cereal may now be added to the list of foods that can make you sick or kill you because of lax federal regulation, sloppy corporate manufacturing processes, free-market greed, and disdain by this Administration and its apologists for the essential role of government in providing basic protections for its citizens.

Sooner or later, perhaps Americans are going to notice that, not only does the Bush Administration's miserable incompetence let foreign terrorists kill thousands of our citizens, but that same stunningly incompetent horde of ignoramuses, neo-cons, religious zealots, and simpletons lets foreign and American corporations kill, maim, and otherwise harm a whole lot more than thousands of our citizens. Maybe once citizens figure that out, some people might want to ask their leaders why more than half-a-trillion dollars has been spent on a never-ending War on Terror when that money could have been used to prosecute a far more productive war on corporate greed, sloth, and mendacity. It's certainly a fair question; but it's not one for which Mr. Bush and his Republican corporate apologists will ever have to answer.

They're going to get away with what they've done.


The Dark Wraith recommends cooking everything to well-nuked before eating.

First, my cat was killed by a toxic poison food additive, melamine, from China.

Then it turns out that this poison got into the food chain leading to humans.

Then, there was that warning a couple days ago about imported monkfish actually being deadly poison puffer fish.

And now the FDA is telling people that cheapo toothpaste imported from China has ethylene glycol in it! ETHYLENE GLYCOL?!! The stuff in ANTI-FREEEZE?!! What th' HELL, man? I don't mind my teeth chattering in the Winter, okay?

Is this insanity merely proof once again of what happens under "free market" conditions (both here and in China), or is this really a case study in why the Soviet Union never won the Cold War, just because the Russians thought nukes were the battelfield weapon of choice and never even thought of killing all of us (and our cats) with poisoned food and oral hygiene products? Whichever it is, I am NOT brushing my teeth with any more toothpaste from Aldi's, that's for DAMN sure.