And one for the Democrats and their empty rhetoric:
"Hopefully the new kind of hope you've been hoping for."

Even the Kool-Aide has HFCS.

This stuff will kill you sooner than Mad McCain's dash for WWIII. So drink heavily.

"Sarah Palin...just got her first passport in 2007"

Par for the course. I believe George W Bush applied for his first passport when elected in 2000. If anyone can provide a reference, that would be great.

THANK YOU!!
I'm wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes over this essay.
Oh, wait, maybe they really were tears of grief- me crying over the horror of these last eight years and the police-state-ish direction our country is headed.
We need MORE of Morford's sarcastic, biting, bloviating-pundit-airbag- puncturing comments. He's refreshingly honest, especially given all the recent handwringing from so many others on the left lately- too much dissecting Palin's lack of experience or personal history: did she or didn't she, ban a long list of books in Wasilla when she was Mayor there? Good heavens!
As someone else put it: IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER TO U.S. VOTERS!!
Obama's campaign (and those of us committed to stopping McSame in his tracks) should stop trying to react to every nuance & lie in the oppostion's campaign and start talking more about the devastatiting and horrible result of 8 years of Bush. The economy is tanking. People have lost jobs. Spending in Iraq is shockingly high (BILLIONS a month?). The crimes of Bush & Co., the relentless spying on Americans, the stolen elections, an incredible high rate of imprisoned Americans! The policies that were designed to enrich Halliburton and Blackwater, the lack of support (three YEARS later!) for Katrina's flood victims and on and on and on. REAllY!! With only two months to go before the election, there is simply NO LACK of things to highlight.

america is the new evil and for billions of people all around the world that aint funny at all

cheers, b

"Shut up and drink your high fructose corn syrup, sucker"

As if the California Demoks are going to give up their San Joaquin McFruits/McNuts enterprises. Like we are supposed to forget that their goal is to corner the worldwide market for "premium" food commodities. Let's see if San Francisco votes for wealth concentration/world domination or if it votes instead for land/water/food rights for all.

Evil: It's the New Good!
contemporary talking points are truely amazing, i'm so glad i'm here to witness the lies and the Truth. to live in this generation, to watch the cold shoulders, as they turn away from me, it reminds me just how many 'live the circus'. i'm pained at times when the leaders provide such a legacy for their children. they call us alligators, and proudly announce that their mission is to 'drain the swamp'-- thus eliminating the alligators and its natural home. of course they claim to be: 'the new good', yet the lies are nothing new, the greed, the pride, the murder, the traditions that seem so patriotic. it is no wonder that the evil are always...always afraid of something, only a few will rightly figure out: that you don't have to live your life in fear. so when they reach out to you..and they do, don't sink to their level with a 'bitchslap' (hehehe i've never said that before) rather show them what is honour, love, and truth.
smillllllllllllleeessss & kisssssseeessssss
wild;)

Big Auto is having some lyin' fun, too - based on the rash of new campaigns, who knew US carmakers only and have always produced the most efficient, Earth-friendly vehicles in history?

And then there's GE, who used to bring good things to life (like war toys and stuff) but now is all about "being green" and "putting imagination to work," (for the Pentagon.)

And here in TX we've been suffering a new Barnett Shale campaign for over a year - "everyone in Texas wins" when Big Energy rapes the land from Dallas to Ft. Worth, "a small inconvenience" for "a better future" the Chesapeake Energy narrator reminds...

.

” You gotta dance with the one who brung ya ”

.

Obama is FOR "clean coal", which is one of the many many many reasons I will not and cannot ever vote for him. Every time I see him in an interview I think "he should never ever be President". (insert big sigh).

I hope we can avoid the resource wars of the 21st century. It's not too late for americans to WAKE UP and realize we simply are going to have to consume less and give up some of our "goodies" for the greater good of humankind.

.

‘I would rather vote for what I want ...and not get it,

than vote for what I don’t want ...and get it.’

Eugene Debs

.

.

VOTE NADER 2008… You’ll be glad you did and so will I…

http://www.votenader.org/index.html

.

"To be fair, they have a meager point. Despite its highly processed nature, HFCS might very well be exactly as bad for you as plain ol' sugar..."

Perhaps not. New study suggests the possibility that the body may be more susceptible to obesity (and all its related problems), from ingesting fructose more than sucrose.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080326121239.htm

Palin - Exploiting Virgin Alaska for America's Good
paid for by God, Inc.

What is it with most americans and the bigger picture ?

Numbed and dumbed into a near total state of submission.

Good fuckin' grief people it ain't just evil that has scaled the mountain of fluffy dreams it is the entire set of the seven [7] deadlies that have been transformed before our very senses.

This march to deify [each reader may select a dog of his/her choice]the 7 deadlies started the moment time began however it gained real and true sense of being during the second world war.

This movement lay waiting in the white hot embers of human degradation and destruction for the right group to make the transition from "idea" to reality.

The boomers, the generation that had[has] everything only to find that enough is never enough, are to be congradulated.

As the ronnie raygun era unfolded I observed and commented on our demise. Then when scumbag wee-willie clinton was given a pass for his lyin' [and I did not give a rat's ass WRT the why - all that matters is he fuckin' well lied to the entire world which included 100's of millions of CHILDREN] so I decided that it would be prudent that any parent who cared for the well being of their child and/or children must spend time teaching their kiddies to lie, and lie well, or face the realization that their children will be eaten alive by those children whose parents saw the light.

That was then and this is now so why is anyone surprised with our outcome ?

Must be part and parcel of the numbness and dumbness that has engulfed america or the olde "fuck me, go figure, some things are connected; I guess, eh ?".

"Fascism Is Soley A Human Disease"

What a hysterical rant. The author was drinking high fructose corn squeezin's mixed with benzedrine while desperately seeking Sarah Palin hot photos on the web, before scribbling this howl.

Can I mention... I recently saw a map of 'Sarah's pipeline' that begins in northern Alaska and terminates in Alberta Canada. Now what the hell is going on in Alberta Canada? Oh, right - that's where Canada's tar-sands oil is. Why is this important? To extract the oil from the 'tar-sands' you need two things. Water and fire (actually, heat from fire). Now that brings to mind the old question: Follow the money.

As one conservative Canadian PM asked (and I paraphrase), Why use clean energy to make dirty energy?

Why indeed. Follow the money...

Please Foreclose on the Rogue

Please foreclose on the rogue
Debit masters
Please foreclose on the rogue

Please foreclose on the greed backed green
the fascist fad sure is running on lean
the plunder maverick is Johnny the mean
the celebrity one is Sarah the good

Double talk is so in vogue
you’d think the GOP was hosting change
so merge the madness with the chant
pick up the tempo of the rant
USA USA USA

A mob just like the KKK
chanting slogans like talking tongues
merging madness with victims sons
doing the drill to the thrill
of the enduring chant
drill baby drill

bomb rebuild & feed
empire is what we need
bomb rebuild & feed

Please foreclose on the rogue
Debit masters
Please foreclose on the rogue

Mark Moreford is behaving like a poster child for the Christofascist, crypto-capitalist totalitarian right's "I hate queers, liberals, and everyone from San Francisco" ad campaign. He is a left-wing-nut version of Rush Limbaugh whose flamboyant hyperbole is just plain pointless and not funny.

Poet

who avoids high fructose corn sweetner like bubonic plague, lives in a city suffering from the pollution that comes from "clean coal" power generation (can you spell m-e-c-u-r-e-y? boys and girls?), does no shopping at Walmart, and will not vote for any Republican and very few Democrats in the coming election (even if I have to write in Mickey Mouse in protest to the crummy selection)

I like Moford, too. He takes interesting examples that seem unrelated to make the case that things are not only NOT what they are being made to appear as, but the costs of this verisimilitude (my favorite is that bio-genetically altered products need not be labeled as such because "they are substantially equivalent to the real thing") are enormous. We will experience the price as too many are being trained (like Pavlov's dogs) to respect obvious COUNTERFEITS.

As others have pontificated on prior CD threads, the dollar is its own faux currency, devoid of being backed by gold. Food isn't food, many body parts are no longer real, mother nature is being everywhere enslaved--a virtual holocaust upon the natural world--and sold off; and in the case of Mother nature's treasures, once a genebank is broken into and looted... it will be eons before the damaged specie can restore itself, if then.

Here's one for you "Empire Pie"

Money's valuelessness
when WORTH is lost
forfeited for the delusion of convenience
by those who lack grace, and spiritual experience.

"Truly, Palin is that most dangerous of self-aggrandizing right-wing politico, a potentially very powerful woman full of moxie and nerve and intensely intolerant, extremist views who actually hates women"...love it!

Let's let her loose on the world and see what happens.She is sound and fury with little substance but perfect for those who believe the lies Americans have been fed for years. Mission Accomplished, war is peace, ignorance is atrength and freedom is slavery.

Obama was not my first choice but I will vote for him rather than risk the horror of a McCain-Palin regime!

Honestly, as horrible as this sounds, I honestly TRULY don't mind if McCain wins, or Obama, either/or as they are both one and the same just with a different veneer on their surfaces. I WANT America to become what it is on the slippery slope to becoming: complete and utter corporate fascist oligarchy. I WANT the stupid sheeple to continue to vote Rethuglican (if they can get their fat, lazy asses off the couch in between American Idol and Fox "News" long enough to do so) and continue to yell "boo-rah!" whenever they hear Limbaugh extort the wasting or torture of the Islamo-fascists. I WANT America to get what it's got coming to it. You truly do get the government you deserve, and this country deserves Rethuglican rule. We DESERVE fascism. No society in the history of the world has been as apathetic, obtuse, dense, stupid, disinterested, uneducated, and lethargic and easily-swayed by propaganda as the American people.

Let them reap what they sow. Let them taste the destruction of the Constitution and be spied on and hated by the rest of the world. Let them watch as their economy crashes and burns, while the entire time they chant "Usa! Usa!" endlessly as they wave their swastika, er, American flag fervently. Let them watch as the Land of the Free becomes the Land of the Watched and Despised. And maybe - just maybe - when the very dregs of fascism and authoritarian rule has been plumbed and even mainstream "conservatives" are shocked from their drugged stupor to sit up and say "what the hell has my country become?" - MAYBE the U.S. will recover and again be able to stand upright as a beacon of goodness.

I freaking doubt it, but what the hey. Only through toil and tribulation can you appreciate the liberties you have let slip through your fingers through idiocy and complacency. America needs to learn some hard lessons.

Let it start learning them.

"The only thing required for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing."

Corn requires lots of chemicals and GM to grow. Great for the chem and biotech industry and for the politicians they bribe. HFCS causes obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc. Great for Big Pharma and the medical establishment. It also kills a lot of people. Great for those of us remaining because we don't want to use birth control to curb global overpopulation. It's a win-win.

And no mention of stevia. Ok kiddies, here's what I mean:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston13.html

Does High-Fructose Corn Syrup Have to Be in Everything?

by Wilton D. Alston

In her recent article on cholesterol, Karen De Coster provided information that should be beneficial to anyone interested in staying healthy. In this piece I want to address a similar issue. The title says it all. Why, in the name of health, do so many foods marketed to the U.S. public include high fructose corn syrup? Even the most cursory search of the many health sites on the Internet yield a veritable cornucopia of negative information about this stuff.

The Usual Suspect – Again

Of course the culprit for the presence of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in all sweetened foods in the U.S. is the state. The mechanism is the incredibly high tariff on sugar produced in other countries. The U.S. government would rather force manufacturers to use inferior and hazardous high fructose corn syrup, which can be created from corn – a crop grown in the U.S. – than allow them to use more natural sugar from places that seem rather obvious. I don’t know about you, but when I think of sugar, I think of sugar cane in South America, but when the USDA thinks of sugar, apparently they think of cornfields in Nebraska!

But Really, Who Cares?

What if corn sweetener is just as good as sugar from cane in South America? Wouldn’t it make sense to support our "local" producers? Well, no, not with legislation. If corn sweetener were really better than cane sugar, legislation artificially inflating our price for cane sugar would not be needed. Read that sentence again, because that is about the size of it. Whenever the state gets involved to force the market to take a particular path it is only because the path chosen by the state would not otherwise be taken by anyone intelligent enough to decide on his own. Period.

On the other hand, what if corn sweetener is not just as good as sugar from cane? Well, Houston, then we have a problem! According to experts such as Mehmet Oz and Michael Roisen, high-fructose corn syrup is a horrible sweetener. In their landmark book, "You: The Owner’s Manual…," they state:

"One of the biggest evil influences on our diet is the presence of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sugar substitute that itself is a sugar found in soft drinks and many other sweet, processed foods. The problem is that HCFS inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off gherin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry." (See page 192.)

With apologies to the Church Lady, "Well, isn’t that special?" So the state forces us to consume a sweetener that’s obviously not as good for us, just so their constituents can sell more, make more money, and vote en bloc for the legislator who visits this evil on the rest of us. Sounds like yet another example of misplaced incentives.

Other Sweeteners – Same Problem

Those of us who are "into" health know all about stevia. This is a very powerful natural sweetener, extracted from South American plants much as sugar is extracted from cane. One can find stevia in health food stores, but it is not allowed as an ingredient in processed foods. Why not? The typical statist would say "because it is not shown to be proven safe and effective" which is FDA-speak for "because we didn’t say you could use it." Call me a conspiracy realist, but I doubt that "safe and effective" had much to do with the FDA deciding to ban stevia. Nothing drives this point home better than this little tidbit: the FDA initially labeled stevia as an "unsafe food additive" after an anonymous complaint. (Yes, an anonymous complaint!) You simply cannot make this stuff up.

But stevia has been used by other cultures for thousands of years with no ill effects. Yes, thousands of years. If it’s so dangerous, why are we in the U.S. alone on Earth in recognizing the danger? In Japan the government will not allow artificial sweeteners in soft drinks, so they use stevia instead. In fact, it accounts for 40% of the Japanese sweetener market. In the U.S. the government won’t allow stevia, but we get a heaping helping of Aspartame, Sucralose, and all manner of other chemical junk. Where is the logic? (Maybe I should just follow the money.) Interestingly, many of the sweetening chemicals we're allowed to have as additives come with warning labels, by the way, so the government considers it established that there are health problems with those.

Conclusion

The decisions we each make about what we eat are some of the most basic ones we'll ever encounter. But in the case of HFCS – just as one example – we in the U.S. aren’t given that choice. The FDA claims to "protect" us from snake-oil salesmen of every stripe, yet when it comes to being able to choose an item of food that is among the most basic and prevalent in any diet, economic considerations trump safety. From my standpoint, while this about par for the course, it is still darned unsettling.

What will it take to reverse the tide?

Since both Mccain and Obama support continuing the over-subsidization of Big Corn against grass-fed, hemp, and stevia, it is time to vote 3rd party:

Nader, Mckinney, Paul, etc ... Hell, even Bob Barr doesn't buy into the war on drugs though he's got a long ways to go before I can trust him to be a libertarian instead of a "conservative".

Yes, HFCS is everywhere. It took me months but I finally found a whole-grain bread that does not contain it. I actually considered baking my own bread, but eh that's a little tough in a dorm room. And I did not see the drink commercial on TV, I saw one about this girl offering her boyfriend a popsicle, and he said no thanks cuz of the HFCS, and she starts saying its like sugar, blah blah blah. Oh, and try Jones Cola. Sweetened with pure cane sugar. The berry lemonade is fricking awesome.

The ad I want to see for clean coal:

Scene: suburban kitchen will all American housewife (maybe a clone of Sarah Palin) looking out the window with the sounds of happy children playing in the background.

Housewife: Our sandbox used to be filled will sand. But then I found out that sand is just another form of DIRT. Would you want your children playing in the dirt? That is why we dumped the sand and filled our sandbox with good American Clean Coal. Now I can rest assured that my children can remain healthy. And America has enough Clean Coal reserves to keep our sandbox filled for more than 300 years. [pause] Children! It is time to come in for lunch.

Scene: Door opens and several children, covered head to toe with black coal dust, pour into the kitchen.

First child: Mom, do we need to wash up?

Housewife: No need to wash. That is not dirt. It is just healthly Clean Coal.

Announcer: Clean Coal. America’s future. Etc.

Like crack cocaine and the batch of Canadian superweed that inspired you to quit your job as a heart surgeon and become a pig farmer in Oklahoma, video advertising is a drug that human beings just can't handle.

Why pick on poor little high fuctose corn syrup? If TV wanted you to eat poop, there would be 47 varieties of it in your kitchen right now.

Jacob Freeze

HFCS is hard to avoid, but I manage. Going to the "grocery store" - average store is a bizarre experience these days. Aisle after aisle of what I consider "junk food." Highly procesed, soaked in HFCS and nitrates. It is no wonder the average person is HUGE these days. I am normal weight and people look at me like I am skinny or something. How do I do it? Cook at home from scratch, organically grown, unprocessed, no corn syrup.. sweeten things with maple syrup, agave, and raw sugar, honey, Ben & Jerry's. It is hard to avoid even still. It is in Everything, forget soda! salad dressing and most every condiment.

HFCS IS Evil and we must not take it for granted. Thanks for the humorous spin.

snydly
HFCS is way more destructive to the people of this, and any other nation, than pot, coke and most of the rest of them combined. What's wrong with this picture?

Dick Cheyney was hunting birds??? I thought he was hunting humans and went to the wrong place...probably so full of Corn and so Corn fed on corn profits he couldn't shoot straight- tended to shoot WAY RIGHT the way all his murderous friends do...but let's face it, some can profit from blood when the war is just or as is the case now- TOTALLY UNJUST: or environment degradation as in "clean, sweet coal"- knee high in carbon lining your lungs by the 4th of July...and so on...

Consider how much "good" has become the new "evil"! This applies to Americans of both parties. We have become exceptionally Good at justifying military aggression, and have been waging serial wars since World War II. It is now Good to disregard everything the Bible teaches about the poor, and our collective responsibilities toward the poor. Compassion is weakness, and empathy just isn't normal! It is Good to be very, very vain; after all, there are needy cosmetics and clothing corporations counting on you. We celebrate greed. Don't worry about that Commandment about killing; simply rename the act as, say, capital punishment, and it becomes Good. And the list goes on.