All About Sarah

A defensive Sarah Palin--is there any other kind?--has released an almost 8 minute video statement in which she focused little time on the victims of the gun violence in Tucson and again revealed a thin-skinned obsession with her critics. Palin said "journalists and pundits (mispronouncing the latter) should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
So lax gun laws aren't what's "reprehensible" to the gun-nutty, half-term, cash-and-carry former Alaska governor. But what of the highly inappropriate phrase Palin chose--blood libel? TBLMISBT forwarded this, via Politico:

Palin’s use of the charged phrase “blood libel” - which refers to the anti-Semitic accusation from the Middle Ages that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzoh for Passover - touched off an immediate backlash.

“The blood libel is something anti-Semites have historically used in Europe as an excuse to murder Jews – the comparison is stupid. Jews and rational people will find it objectionable,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic political consultant and devout Jew. “This will forever link her to the events in Tucson. It deepens the hole she’s already dug for herself… It’s absolutely inappropriate.

And like everything with this stage-managed, right-wing celebrity, the video's flag-over-the-shoulder, faux-official setting belies a bottom-feeding, ignorant shallowness that's always all about Sarah.

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Rachel Maddow Knows Exactly How To Deal With Fox News.

That Trip To GlennBeckistan Made Jon Stewart Sick, Too.

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The entire skewering is here. Enjoy...

Another Glenn Beck Snow Job.

...and Beck's fake news channel employer ramps up the stupidity--even for them:

Felon's Assault.

From ThinkProgress, further evidence that felonious burglar G. Gordon Liddy is insane:

Yesterday on his radio show, conservative host G. Gordon Liddy continued the right wing’s all-out assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. First, just like Tom Tancredo, Liddy slammed Sotomayor’s affiliation with the civil rights group La Raza — and referred to the Spanish language as “illegal alien“:

                LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.

Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor’s gender:

                LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Finally, Liddy disputed the entire idea that there’s anything wrong with the paucity of women and total lack of Hispanics on the Court:

                LIDDY: And everybody is cheering because Hispanics and females have been, quote, underrepresented, unquote. And as you pointed out, which I thought was quite insightful, the Supreme Court is not designed to be and should not be a representative body.

Audio is here: 

Cheery-O! Right-Wing Bloggers Get Their Test Results.

Cereal hasn't gotten this much attention since Seinfeld was still in production.

From HealthNews.com:

In a letter to Cheerios’ manufacturer General Mills, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that the wording on the cereal’s box suggests it is intended for use in preventing or treating heart disease by lowering cholesterol, claims only FDA-approved drugs are allowed to make. They also pointed out that federal regulations do not permit companies to quantify the benefit of their foods, which General Mills does when it claims an average 4 percent reduction in bad cholesterol. “We certainly don’t have any issues with the safety of Cheerios,” Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in an interview. “We just believe that the labeling on this particular product has gone beyond what the science supports.”   
The agency says it does allow whole-grain products to carry certain claims about reducing heart disease and cancer risk, but they must state explicitly that such foods need to be part of diets that are also low in saturated fats and cholesterol and high in fiber-rich fruits and vegetables as well as grains. “The claim on your website leaves out any reference to fruits and vegetables, to fiber content, and to keeping the levels of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet low,” the FDA letter said. “Therefore, your claim does not convey that all these factors together reduce the risk of heart disease and does not enable the public to understand the significance of the claim in the context of total daily diet.”

Cheerios updated their website in response.

And because it's the Obama FDA, the right-wing nuthouse is predictably in high dudgeon.

From Reuters, with a hat-tip to The Best-Looking Man In Show Business Today, who drolly notes that the Obama-fixated right must have picked up on the fact that Cheerios are, indeed, "shaped like O's":

"It's fairly obvious to me why the Obama administration is going after Cheerios over possible deceptive advertising," says the Deadenders blog. "Babies love them more then him."

"This is the kind of irritating, intrusive nonsense that makes people weary of their government and every smarmy bureaucratic microbe in it," writes David Crocker of the Behind Blue Lines blog.

...Never mind that Obama almost certainly had no idea that his FDA was planning to go after Cheerios.

Food seems to be a common theme among crazy conservatives. For them, wholesome, "American" foods are a-OK. Eurocommie foods are right out. "Washington raised ciggie taxes to pay for SCHIP expansion and are [sic] gearing up to raise soda taxes to pay for Obamacare," writes the reliably nutty Michelle Malkin. "No vice is safe from the health police. Dijon mustard and arugula exempted, of course."

"So I guess now the Communist-in-Chief will declare a War on Cereal," rants Ed Anger of the Weekly World News, proving the increasing irrelevance of old-school parody. You can't tell it from the real thing.

...Note, by the way that none of these critics actually addresses the substance of the FDA's argument.

But then, do these toxic troglodytes ever base an argument on substance?

Crazy Talk.

I'll place partial responsibility for the Pittsburgh cop killings where I feel it belongs: squarely in the lap of the right-wing echo chamber, which seems intent on whipping its base into blind rage over everything from an imagined Obama gun ban to imagined socialism. 

From KDKA & the AP:

A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. 
Friends said 23 year-old Richard Poplawski feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns. 
Three officers were killed.
Police planned to release more details at a 3 p.m. news conference Saturday. 
Poplawski was arrested after a several-hour standoff. 
One witness reported hearing hundreds of shots. 
The shootings occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot March 21 in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001. 
Poplawski's friends at the scene described him as a young man who thought the Obama administration would ban guns. 
One friend, Edward Perkovic, said Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." 
Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said he feared that President Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama." 
Perkovic, a 22-year-old who said he was Poplawski's best friend, said he got a call at work from him in which he said, "Eddie, I am going to die today. ... Tell your family I love them and I love you." 
Perkovic said: "I heard gunshots and he hung up. ... He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot." 
Vire, 23, said Poplawski once had an Internet talk show but that it wasn't successful. 
Vire said his friend had an AK-47 rifle and several powerful handguns, including a .357 Magnum. 
Another friend, Joe DiMarco, said Poplawski had been laid off from his job at a glass factory earlier this year. 
DiMarco said he didn't know the name of the company, but knew Poplawski had been upset about losing his job. 

Shepherds Busily Tending To Their Flocks.

     I blogged earlier about Betsy (Elizabeth?) McCaughey, and pointed out both her checkered past and current re-emergence as a rabid critic of government-funded health care. She was discredited 15 years ago when she attacked the Clinton Administration's attempt at health care reform, and now is setting her sights on the Obama Administration with the same goal of derailment in mind.

     The right-wing echo chamber is reverberating, with GOP top dog Rush Limbaugh warning his clueless herd that, "Your medical treatments will be tracked by a federal system." FOX News alarmist Megyn Kelly is equally panicked, huffing something about "the Feds," while cautioning, "You can see the controversy over this."

     McCaughey's Bloomberg piece was headlined and linked on the fringe fave Drudge Report, Limbaugh is all over it--while taking credit for the disloyal opposition--and FOX News helps carry the water, too. 

     Synchronicity...