Losing Game

To add to their “woke” toy lineup of gender-neutral dolls, Mattel is rolling out a “nonpartisan” edition of uno, the iconic card game. As reported by Fox News, the nuevo uno (a little Spanish lingo, there) features orange and purple cards instead of “politically-charged” red and blue cards. Mattel’s reason, according to its website: “No red or blue cards means no taking sides! Whether you lean a little left or a little right, one thing we can all agree on is how much we love uno!”

The new version comes with a “veto” card, which skips the player’s next turn and requires him or her or xir to change the subject. (For Trump supporters only, no doubt.) But if Mattel is targeting buyers triggered by red and blue, the company isn’t playing with a full deck. This business is a house of cards. What’s next, “woke” Chutes and Ladders, where kids advance up the ladder when they lose? Monopoly, with jail renamed Safe Space? Barbie’s DreamHouse, complete with homeless tents and plastic poo on the front walk? Let’s not play that game.

Jane Err

It’s way past time for the anti-American actress Jane Fonda to totter over to Golden Pond. Once a useful commie tool for Ho Chi Minh, at 81 she’s now gunning to be the commie poster-oldster for global warming. Supposedly inspired by teen climate scold Greta Thunberg, Fonda is running weekly “Fire Drill Friday” protests, where she and other actresses-of-a-certain-age try to get arrested to save the planet. As reported by The Washington Examiner, Hanoi Jane recently declared, “We just don’t need more stuff … I have to walk the talk so I’m not buying any more clothes.” (Truth is, Jane hasn’t been fonda apparel since her “Barbarella” phase.) Days later, as reported by HotAir.com, Fonda said she wanted to see a sort of Nuremberg trial for “climate criminals.” Fossil fuel industry executives and enabling politicians, she said, “should all be tried for crimes against humanity and nature.” (She did not mention, of course, the human casualties after she aided and abetted the Viet Cong by straddling a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.)

Yet Jane draws the line at actually inconveniencing herself for the environment. According to PJ Media, she has repeatedly dodged questions about helping the earth if it requires her to give up air travel. Maybe when her broom breaks.

That’s Bananas

I guess we can’t call this monkey business. Sandra, a 33-year-old orangutan immigrant to America, was granted “legal personhood” in a landmark court ruling in Argentina. As reported by The [uk] Guardian, Sandra is now settling in at the Center for Great Apes, a sanctuary in Wauchula, FL, to hang around fellow orangutans and chimpanzees.

In 2015, Argentine Judge Elena Liberatori ruled that Sandra was legally not an animal but “a non-human person” who deserved legal rights and better living conditions. As Judge Liberatori explained, “I wanted to tell society something new, that animals are sentient beings and that the first right they have is our obligation to respect them.”

So Sandra the orangutan, as a sentient being, has the legal right to life and respect. Good to know. Trying telling liberals that about an unborn baby. They’ll go ape.

Pernicious Delicious

If it leaves a good taste in your mouth, look out. As reported at TheTakeout.com, researchers from the University of Kansas [KU] say Americans are obese because Big Food schemes to make food too darn tasty. According to a study published in Obesity — one of my favorite scholarly journals — processed snacks or sweets “with alluring combinations of fat, sugar, carbohydrates, and sodium” are said to be “hyperpalatable.” Super-delicious. Which is bad. These foods can “overpower mechanisms that are supposed to signal when we’ve had enough to eat.”

The tastiness-overpowered-me excuse no doubt has trial lawyers salivating over Big Food litigation. The study’s lead author, KU assistant professor of psychology Tera Fazzino, hopes her research will spur policymakers to warn consumers. She suggests a label on foods that taste too good: “This is hyperpalatable.” Or “Don’t eat this,” with a photo of Michelle Obama. (No, I made that part up.)

Ms. Fazzino blames food companies for concocting “well-designed formulas for these types of foods to make them palatable and essentially enhance consumption.” News flash: tastiness is not a conspiracy. But food police see a plot under every potato chip.

SKY ISN’T FALLING

O! Zone

The ozone-layer-is-disappearing hysteria has always had more holes than Swiss cheese. In See I Told You So, I listed the plethora of ridiculous ozone predictions, including that in ten years city dwellers would be wearing gas masks. Folks, that book was published 37 years ago, and we’re still hearing the same crapola: “The earth is heating up and the ozone layer is disappearing because of air conditioning and underarm deodorants.”

Meanwhile, the only holes are in liberals’ heads. As reported by Fox News, nasa and noaa announced that the ozone layer has the smallest hole since its discovery in 1982. According to satellite data, the hole is usually 8 million square miles; it shrank to a record low 3.9 million square miles this fall.

But government agencies still manage to blame global warming. Even though the smallest ozone hole ever is good news, says chief scientist for Earth Sciences Paul Newman on nasa’s website, “it’s important to recognize that what we’re seeing this year is due to warmer stratospheric temperatures. It’s not a sign that atmospheric ozone is suddenly on a fast track to recovery.” Oh, holey hole. It’s way past time for the doomsayers to shut their pie holes.

Plastic Tactics

To the long list of things environmentalist wackos are wrong about, add the left’s crusade against plastic. According to the invaluable Watts Up With That climate blog, there’s good news on plastic floating in the oceans. A new study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology totally contradicts liberals’ claim that “polystyrene persists in the environment for millennia.”

Turns out, yogurt cups, drink cups, and the other polystyrene packaging found on the world’s beaches are “very simple natural structures … not Frankensteinian monstrosities made by chemical madmen.” Because they are hydrocarbons, they “make good food for living things [such as microbes] which oxidize hydrocarbons for energy.” Yep, ocean creatures eat plastic.

The study found that waves and wind break down plastics floating in the oceans into smaller and smaller pieces until they disappear altogether, thanks to microbes. According to Gregg Beckham, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, these microbes “are evolving faster and better strategies to break down manmade plastics.”

The researchers say their goal is to enlighten the “numerous international governmental agencies that steer policy” on the facts about plastic, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. To leftists who run these international agencies, hating plastic (except for their smartphones) is religion.

That’s Bananas illustration for The Limbaugh Letter ©2020 Allison Smith; Losing Game illustration screen grab from Mattel video; Jane Err photo ©2020 Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/Shutterstock; Nutcracker Seat photo screen grab from Laila Laurel video; Shooting Blanks photo illustration for The Limbaugh Letter ©2020 Allison Smith /White Markers/ixpert/Fullmoney/Shutterstock; O! Zone Cartoon ©2020 www.CartoonStock.com; Plastic Tactics ©2020 Varlamova Lydmila/Shutterstock