Author: Brad Krantz

Nothing like a good Scare Headline to start the week.  We’ve known forever that ham, hotdogs, bacon and sausage…. representing processed meats….. and regular old meat itself…. are not good for you.  Now the rest of the world, via the World Health Organization, has caught up and issued THE WARNING about how your risk of cancer…. all kinds of it…. increase when you eat this stuff.  Which I have, in amounts way beyond the Maximum Recommended Daily Adult Requirement (oops, that’s the old Product 19 commercial turned upside down).  I should be soooo dead right now!  Super dead, if meat eating alone is a major determinant of health.

  Fortunately, it is not the sole determinant.  Now, the good news! “What we do know is that avoiding red meat in the diet is not a protective strategy against cancer,” said Robert Pickard, a member of the Meat Advisory Panel and emeritus professor of neurobiology at Cardiff (Wales) University. “The top priorities for cancer prevention remain smoking cessation, maintenance of normal body weight and avoidance of high alcohol intakes.”  The UK Guardian quotes Dr Elizabeth Lund, “an independent consultant in nutritional and gastrointestinal health, and a former research leader at the Institute of Food Research, who acknowledges she did some work for the meat industry in 2010 – said red meat was linked to about three extra cases of bowel cancer per 100,000 adults in developed countries. ‘A much bigger risk factor is obesity and lack of exercise,’ she said. ‘Overall, I feel that eating meat once a day combined with plenty of fruit, vegetables and cereal fibre, plus exercise and weight control, will allow for a low risk of colorectal cancer and a more balanced diet.”

While I would normally try to justify my lifelong habit of bad eating on the hope that in a few weeks there will be a different study that will say exactly the opposite about meats…. the Good Egg/Bad Egg or Coffee is Good/Bad for you decades-long back and forth…. I know better on this one.  There will be no turnaround here, and I have to pin my hopes on a Climate Change Denial-style disbelief and ignoring of the facts.  I have to get on board with beef.org, the National Pork Producers Council, and other members of Big Beef who will surely attack and belittle the findings by the WHO.  They’ll warn us that Obama… probably Michelle Obama…. will be knocking on my door, barging in with the jackbooted Meat Police thugs, crowbar-opening my refrigerator and confiscating my stash of Jimmy Dean sausage and Hebrew National salami and hotdogs.  They’ll pull out statistics that say you’re more likely to die driving to the doctor’s office to get the checkup to tell you you’re sick than you’ll ever be eating one New York Strip Steak per week.  A little moderation is always good for the soul and for the scale when it comes to any kind of food, but I’m closing in on the age of “hey, I’ve made it this far….WTF?”

From Blogger Moody Eye View: It took a whole day, but the Fox Five didn’t disappoint. Courtesy Mediaite:

“I think that there is a bigger conspiracy here,” she said, “by the World Health Organization.” Whether she was being serious or not, co-host Eric Bolling egged her on: “To do with what?”“Climate change. Global warming,” said Perino. “There’s a big push against any sort of animal consumption.”  Bolling asked if she meant vegans, and Perino confirmed. Greg Gutfeld, meanwhile, interjected with yet another wisecrack: “Reduce our carbon hoofprint, as they say.”

The biggest rightwing slur site on the internet….. bigger than Breitbart or the Blaze or Redstate… is Drudge.  He is the acknowledged master of the innuendo, the creation of scandal where there is none, the injection of 100% non-relevant information about a subject that creates instant conversation and discussion because so many journalists and rightwing talkshow hosts lazily look at his often out-of-context headlines and run with them.  Seldom examining Drudge’s spitballs for accuracy or actual importance, his ability to influence the national conversation is impressively undeniable.  Knowing this, he often will create, out of thin air, often with an unfair photo, a link to an article that in no way was represented by his screaming headline.  Over time, I will continue to point this out “to raise awareness” and “out of an abundance of caution.” Here, he goes to Google Images on Sunday and finds a cake with well over 100 candles to illustrate the shocking, aged, decrepit old hag Hillary Clinton, about to turn 68.The very idea that Hillary Clinton’s age is fair game in the campaign is absurd, since, among other reasons, she would be about 9 months younger than Ronald Reagan was upon his election and inauguration.  Not on the Drudge agenda, for sure.  No need to remind you how much longer women live, on average, than men.  To be fair, many of us thought St. Reagan was already losing his edge during his 1980 campaign, and there was little doubt of his marked mental deterioration while in office, verified by his children numerous times over the years.  But to be even more fair, if Hillary Clinton’s ability to stay sharp for 11 hours in front of the Benghazi Panel doesn’t prove her stamina and mental acuity beyond that of many people 25 years younger than her, nothing does.  Reagan joked his way around the issue constantly.  His perfectly-delivered, age-deflecting one-liner singlehandedly flattened Walter Mondale in an ’84 debate.  Here he is, with Nancy, celebrating his 70th birthday just two weeks after taking office in 1981.The “low energy” shtick Donaldo de Trumpado has been spewing towards Jeb and especially now Ben masks the fact that, if elected, the Manhattan Megalomaniac would be the oldest first-term person elected president. Born in 1946, he’d be 70 upon election and inauguration.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Trumpado is two months OLDER than Hillary’s first husband, former President Bill Clinton who was president a full generation ago.  Any focus on Hillary Clinton’s age is the Mother of All Double Standards.  And count on the Drudge Report to be right in there, feeding the mis/disinformation beast, much to the delight of Hillary Hater Nation.

As the weekend has progressed, Iowa frontrunner Ben Carson has yet to be called on his call to abolish Medicare. And Jeb Bush, whose political stock price is below a dollar, is in danger of being fully delisted as he cuts costs and staff. He could be done after Wednesday’s CNBC debate. Strategerizing with Big Brother W and Daddy and explaining the obvious, Jeb is understandably hesitant to apply the “stuff happens” analysis to his own campaign. His original “stuff happens” application, the g-rated version of the real phrase, came as an NRA-approved response to the October 1 Oregon mass shooting that killed 9. While “stuff happens” is an all-purpose, catch-all explanation for something that could not be anticipated, could not be prevented, but always must be examined for root causes “so it never happens again”…. in a way I’m glad Jeb Bush finally said what one side of the gun debate is really thinking: not much we can do to prevent this kind of thing…. if everyone had a gun these cowards wouldn’t do this…. it’s a free country and a selectively irrational, literalist Second Amendment interpretation is final. Outrage (and FAKE outrage by gun folks) should have caused Jeb to have to ‘splain himself. Jeb stood tall and stubborn. Meanwhile, SUPERoutrage that Hillary got away with it again. Eleven Hours and even Fox News cut away in the evening from live coverage. No bloody casualties to show. Like the Biggest Ever Hurricane that hit Mexico, the Benghazi Show was never ready for primetime, quickly downgraded from Cat 5 Preening, Posturing, and Badgering to Cat 1 or 2 Repetition and Bickering. In Classic Clintonian Political Damage Control 101, Hillary won the day and the evening. She can thank Kevin McCarthy, Beyonce fan, for helping her dial Bernie Sanders back to Eugene McCarthy-like support levels. (Not a perfect analogy but you don’t pass up two McCarthies when you get the chance!) The literary version, that applies to war, of “stuff happens” is “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.” War plans and diplomatic compounds in war zones are always subject to immediate violence, outside forces, mistakes, and 180 degree shifts that no planning or prevention can anticipate or stop. Are we going to ascribe those same characteristics to our schoolrooms, movie theaters, and other public places under the “stuff happens” doctrine?

Let me see if I have this Moment of Fake Victimhood Of and Sincere Apology From Donaldo de Trumpado right…. He tweets out an idiotic, juvenile blurb revealing his true feelings about anyone dumb enough to support Ben Carson in Iowa. “‪#‎BenCarson‬ is now leading in the ‪#‎polls‬ in ‪#‎Iowa‬. Too much‪#‎Monsanto‬ in the ‪#‎corn‬ creates issues in the brain?” There’s immediate Hawkeye blowback. Now feeling the pressure of not being number one, Trumpado backtracks and pathetically blames an intern for what was clearly his tweet. Written in the Trumpado style, all the way. The comment, really only the 296th most obnoxious thing he’s said as a candidate, is exactly like other stuff that he has doubled-down on, refused to apologize for…. things that might have knocked others out of the race have only strengthened his standings in the polls, as Mr. Tell It Like It Is. While most of us reasonable people have long thought eventually this garbage would catch up with him, he has levitated higher and higher. But like housing bubbles and financial bubbles, political bubbles eventually burst. Donald Trump is a politician in retreat. He can’t take a punch, even when the punch is as simple as a few polls in Iowa in October that don’t have him #1.

http://www.ibtimes.com/donald-trump-offensive-iowa-tweet-update-campaign-intern-denies-having-access-twitter-2153846#.ViqQ3Wr2l-E.twitter

 

The greatest straight men in comedy history include: Bud Abbott, Ed McMahon, Dan Rowan, Teller, Bing, Dean, Desi, and Margaret Dumont. None of them hold a candle to the rotating cast of C-Span hosts who never laugh, never break a sweat, and never respond to the most idiotic, uninformed, racist callers, day after day. It’s comedy gold, courtesy of the cable television industry as a public service! Congrats to Mediaite for picking this little gem! In the grand tradition of “why isn’t there a Miss WHITE America?” and “why isn’t there a WHITE history month?”…… it’s “Where’s the Right White Caucus, B–ch?”

 

Where IS the White Caucus?
C-SPAN Caller Wants to Know Why Congress Doesn’t Have a ‘White Caucus’