There are no words for this.
Yes, you too can have dinner with Sarah Palin–provided you make the eBay pre-qual and a background check, and “the winning bidder is…a suitable bidder based on her [Palin's] subjective standards of suitability, professionalism, background and other factors.”
And of course assuming that she shows up, which is not a given these days.
Remember that lovely organic vegetable garden Michelle Obama started behind the White House?
Think again. I particularly shudder at this:
“The end product is a concentrated mass of heavy metals and carcinogenic, teratogenic, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, replete with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There are some 80,000 to 90,000 industrial chemicals, including a host of dioxin-like deadly substances, which are allowed to be present in sludge under current EPA rules.”
No arugula or tomatoes for Barack, I would suspect. The saddest bit about this affair is that the lead content has been known since July, and people are still burbling about how wonderful the “organic garden” is.
“After almost 6 1/2 years, and 4,327 American dead and 31,483 wounded, it would be indefensible for the U.S. military — overextended and in need of materiel repair and mental recuperation — to loiter in Iraq to improve the instincts of corrupt elites. If there is a worse use of the U.S. military than ‘nation-building,’ it is adult supervision and behavior modification of other peoples’ politicians.”
–George Will
–Garry Trudeau in Doonesbury
The food industry (namely, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, ConAgra Foods, Unilever, General Mills, PepsiCo and Tyson Foods, among others) has self-tasked to offer “smart choices” for “busy, harried housekeepers who have to make fast choices when shopping”.
Among the “smart” choices?
Froot Loops
Fudgsicle bars
Full-fat mayonnaise
and a plethora of highly-processed goods with a trickle of artificial vitamins and minerals sprayed onto foodstuffs that have had all nutrition stripped out of them by excess processing and excessive use of fat, corn syrup, and grains stripped down to nothing but gluten and starch.
From the director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest Michael Jacobson, a member of the committee that devised the Smart Choices criteria until he quit in disgust:
“…the panel was dominated by members of the food industry, which skewed its decisions…It was paid for by industry and when industry put down its foot and said this is what we’re doing, that was it, end of story…”
From Dr. Eileen Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board:
“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal…so Froot Loops is a better choice.”
Uh. Right.
Government official does something extremistly stupid.
Extremist commentator uncovers “conspiracy”.
Self-important Congresscritter heads witchhunt, claiming that extremists have no business in government. (Said ‘critter cannot seem to make intelligent remarks during interviews.)
Government official resigns as a result.
Congresscritter in turn takes donations from extremist president of extremist group.
When an individual or group wants to gain notoriety or power, they often indulge in attempts at revising history, usually by exhibiting “facts” that most often aren’t and suppositions that are as far-fetched as Michael Vick’s declaration that he is an animal lover.
Pat Buchanan, 
the political pundit and closet fascist, has dedicated recent blog entries to such an effort. Did you know that World War II was not Hitler’s fault? (I didn’t.) Did you know that Germany was “forced” to go to war because of Poland’s possession of Danzig, and because of Britain’s pledge to ally itself with Poland were it to be invaded?
More darkly, Buchanan is also claiming that the Holocaust was caused by America’s entry into the war. While this doesn’t strictly qualify as denial of the Holocaust, it strongly smacks of it, as does:
1) his defense of John Demjanjuk, the so-called “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka death camp. (His comparison of Demjanjuk to the mythical Jesus is particularly eyebrow-raising.)
2) his claim that the CO2 gassings at Treblinka could not have taken place.
3) his claim that “[They should] point out that the German people were ‘holocausted’ after WW II, especially by the Bolshevics, originally a Jewish/Zionist movement…”
4) his defense of Islamic “rights” to burn and destroy because of the European press publication (and re-publication) of caricatures of Mohammed, while gnashing his teeth about the profanation of Christian symbolism in similarly “blasphemous” portraiture.
Buchanan pretty much toes the line on the classic wingnut spectrum, but his visibility on MSNBC and past influence within the U.S. government makes him a scary and potentially potent force for the far right.
If it weren’t so grim, it would be funny.
It seems that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (“a government takeover of health care would take away the care that people already have [and] are perfectly satisfied with”) took advantage of a government-run health care system (a government-operated health care facility) when he went to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an elective coronary artery bypass procedure in 2003.
It seems that Senator John McCain, who has welcomed town-hall-generated opposition to a government role in public health care, used a Congressional perk to go to Bethesda to remove a melanoma.
Senator Kip Bond? Hip replacement at Bethesda.
Senator George Voinivich (“bureaucratic Washington-run government plan is not the answer”)? Pacemaker implant. Bethesda.
Representative Roy Blunt (“government-run health care [is like] an elephant“)? Kidney removal (2002) and prostate surgery in 2003, both at Bethesda.
Now, gentlemen, tell us all again about the evils of socialized medicine.
I have ranted before about the lack of real facts in current news feeds. And even when facts are presented, they are usually charged with syntax and vocabulary choices calculated to further one political cause or another.
This from Edward Wasserman, who teaches journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, and published in the Miami Herald:
“All the media has to do is fact check a story first and present the truth instead of repeating lies over and over again in the interest of ‘balance’. Then we won’t have to worry about an ill-informed public not getting the information they need on important issues. Issues that actually have an impact on their lives, like health care.”
and
“Debunking falsehoods is fine, but the more that news media embrace it as if it’s a cure-all, the worse we’ll all be. The solution isn’t to refute, it’s to ignore. End the practice of rewarding the most sensational, the most irresponsible, the most baseless allegations with top-of-the-news billing.” (emphasis mine)
The bottom line here lies in personal responsibility. When those who read the news look for entertainment value somewhere besides the news, that will be a step in the right direction.
Yes, I’m talking about you.
“Waterboarding isn’t torture”–Liz Cheney, former deputy assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush and elder daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney
“I do not exaggerate when I say this issue [adding Holocaust education to school curricula in Gaza] is a war crime, because of how it serves the Zionist colonizers and deals with their hypocrisy and lies”–Hamas spiritual leader Younis al-Asta
