keep_left
keep_left's JournalFor God's sake, even Sarah Palin called it Denali! Anyone remember...
...her ridiculous farewell speech? Here it is, along with William Shatner's satirical "beat poet" version from the Conan show, using Palin's speech verbatim. (See 0:44 and 1:36).
This is a *huge* suck-up to the religious right in general...
...and radtrad Catholics in particular. All one has to do is tune into radtrad Catholic media (EWTN, Relevant Radio, etc.) or really any religious right TV or radio station to hear constant, unrelenting attacks on "gender ideology", "wokeness", etc. The constant politicization is leading to the breakup of these churches (Catholicism is close to schism at the moment, and the Protestant fundamentalist churches are hemorrhaging all their young people). It's also going to lead to the breakup of the country. 
You're welcome. It's a favorite word of mine...
...and I've used it fairly often here. 
As for Chanel Rion, I think you will find she fits the definition of the word fairly well. Rion has appeared in many a DU post, but not as recently. So I'll remedy that with a couple of links to past DU coverage of Ms. Rion. She started out in the White House press pool during Covid, and was eventually banned for refusing to mask. She now has a truly execrable show on OANN, 
"Fine Point with Chanel Rion".
Ms. Rion is well-known (infamous?) for her questionable sartorial choices when it comes to work attire. Note that this photo is not an aberration. Rion arrived at the White House in outfits like this on the regular.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143125554#post6
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/oan-chanel-rion-trump-correspondent-1003975/
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143339153#post11
If readers think this is bad (and it is), they should see...
...what passes for "news" on the MAGA networks like ONAN...er...OANN, NewsMax, etc. In my area, OANN has been buying time on marginal low-power TV stations to carry a few hours of their programming each day. It's called "OAN Plus", and it's basically a multiple-hours-long infomercial for OANN which features all their most partisan shows (including the execrable Chanel Rion). OANN's programming has to be seen to be believed. The attacks on Biden are just relentless and often completely incorrect. I've heard nonstop accusations of various dementias and age-related ailments, none of which are backed up with even the slightest medical evidence. And that's just from tuning in OAN Plus for a few minutes a day (which is all I can stand). It's really disturbing--like an American version of North Korean state TV. 
The real issue with HFCS is corn subsidies and price supports.
Basically, the US has expensive sugar but cheap corn because of our agricultural price support system. At some point (the late '70s, I think), scientists figured out how to convert more of the glucose in corn syrup to fructose, which makes it noticeably sweeter. (This was sort of a side-effect of the biotech revolution, as the technology uses genetically-engineered enzymes). Since corn is really cheap, the corn sugar product (HFCS) is also cheap--significantly cheaper than sugar--and it gets put in a lot of products. That keeps increasing because we Americans are known for our sweet tooth.
More recently, I noticed that they've discovered how to make freeze-dried HFCS which can be used in place of granulated sugar (baked goods, etc.). So HFCS is now added to just about everything you will find in a supermarket, including products which you don't normally associate with added sugar (e.g. crackers). The health effects of this would probably be similar if sugar was as cheap as HFCS and was being added to every conceivable food product. And as you say, this is RFK Jr's stopped-clock moment. He's right about all the sugar in our diets. He's completely wrong about pretty much everything else. (And that includes seed oils--just ask any cardiologist about "healthy" beef tallow, lard, coconut oil, ghee, etc.).
It's a moronic cause that apparently originates with the alt-right...
...who attribute all sorts of evils to seed oils and have made the whole thing into a big conspiracy theory. For the record, RFK Jr is in favor of a lot of really unhealthy dietary changes, like cooking seemingly everything in beef tallow. And banning seed oils, of course.
My guess is that RFK Jr is spending a lot of time on alt-right cesspools like 4chan/8chan/8kun/whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now.
If I recall correctly, Colman McCarthy wrote a particularly caustic...
...column years ago for the New York Times about just that. I think this was the mid-'90s, when clowns like Newt Gingrich were attempting to con voters into the idea that civil rights activists should support far-right neocon politics.
Apropos, here's an excerpt from a response to a post of mine from yesterday.
This is from DU poster "Cirsium".
We have kicked the can down the road for decades now hoping to avoid confrontation, hoping that things will work out, settling for small wins, celebrating moral victories and giving ourselves style points.
There is no more road remaining now.
As the Whigs discovered with the slave power, the longer you put off the inevitable confrontation, the worse it will eventually be when you finally have no choice but abject surrender or fighting back.
link to full post: https://democraticunderground.com/100219912889#post48
This is basically the "mainstreaming" of alt-right fascism...
...the kind of thing one more typically sees on internet cesspools like 4chan/8chan/8kun/whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now. But over time, even fringe ideas become more acceptable, particularly when such ideas are deliberately made more palatable for the masses. Consequently, alt-right "thought" (such as it is) has now become sufficiently familiar and acceptable to MAGA chuds that it is often now consumed nearly full-strength, with only a minimum of dilution. Far-right "intellectuals" are now emboldened to say what they really think, with only modest editing (e.g. overt anti-Semitism is still largely taboo in MAGA world).
...[JD Vance] has been caught essentially plagiarizing alt-right rhetoric, delivering it directly to Trump fans in his speeches. This also serves to short-circuit the "mainstreaming" process that normally goes on in the culture...[it is] the cultural equivalent of injecting uncut hard drugs into the veins of the body politic.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219415111#post1
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219405707#post87
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217833385#post6
The kids on Reddit have really been ripping the hell...
...out of that commercial. I almost feel bad for the guy. He must be seriously hard up for cash.
https://old.reddit.com/r/CommercialsIHate/comments/1govooi/who_would_trust_anything_he_says/
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Member since: Thu Apr 15, 2004, 05:56 PMNumber of posts: 2,605