nutrit supplements
see Scams fraud
merri ok
419
belated disambig?
see grift hype fear extraction social media
looks for holes in regs eg nutrit
gop generates fear/despair, then makes money on it
eg nutritional supplements, online for profit college, gold stock tips, prepper seeds/food
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doesn't jnz peddle as way to combat loss of virility due to eco-toxins?!
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ACSH
Energy drinks under attack for supposed mislabeling | American Council on Science and Health
Energy drinks under attack for supposed mislabeling
Posted on August 29, 2012 by admin
...
:{Currently, New York attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman is investigating whether the companies have violated federal law by promoting these drinks as dietary supplements rather than as foods, given that supplements are much more loosely regulated.
Health advocates have expressed concern largely about the effect of the caffeine on those (typically college students) who drink these beverages along with alcohol. One concern is that caffeine can mask the effects of alcohol. Another concern is that regular consumption of these beverages may produce caffeine-induced cardiovascular complications. The caffeine content in these beverages ranges from 80 to 500 milligrams. Given that a 12-ounce soda has about 50 mg, and a 5-ounce coffee has about 100 mg, those who regularly down these energy drinks should probably be aware of the relative amounts of caffeine they contain, ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava notes.
But whether the labeling is a legal violation is dubious, saysACSH advisor Dr. Henry Manne.“Outright deception in advertising can usually be dealt with quickly and almost surgically by state law enforcement officials,” notes Dr. Manne, who is an emeritus dean at the George Mason University School of Law. “But if the campaign comes out of the blue without prior widespread complaints from the public and it has the earmarks of hype and publicity hounding, there probably is a hidden agenda.” In such instances, he says, “the general rule is ‘look for the competitors.’ Those are the ones most likely to complain about the new product’s danger for the community’s safety, welfare, or morality.” ...
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mojo 3 25
over the weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. roiled the anti-vaccine community when he appeared to endorse the vaccination that prevents measles amid an ongoing outbreak in West Texas that has killed one child and sickened 159 people. But Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group that he helmed for a decade, hasn’t fallen in line with their former leader. Instead, an online fundraiser has appeared to collect donations that it says will be “used to defray the cost of essential vitamins, supplements, and medicines necessary to treat children enduring complications from the measles virus and other illnesses.”
The details of the plan, however, are murky. The fundraising site doesn’t specify exactly which treatments will be bought with the funds collected, how they will be administered, or by whom, and Children’s Health Defense didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.
The timing of the fundraiser matters. Over the last few days, following his apparent endorsement of the MMR vaccine, Kennedy has advocated for measles treatments for which there is limited medical evidence. In a Tuesday Fox News interview, he referred to “very, very good results” from treating measles with steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil—but he didn’t point to any specific research. Cod liver oil contains Vitamin A, which is often used in much higher concentrations to prevent complications from the disease, including blindness, but there is no credible evidence that cod liver oil itself can treat or prevent measles.
The fundraiser’s website lists its creator as Brian Hooker, a biologist and the chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense. It says the funds will go to Tina Siemens, a local historian of the community of Seminole, Texas. Over the last week, Siemens, a member of the local Mennonite church, has been outspoken about what she sees as the media’s unfair portrayal of her Mennonite community, some of whom choose not to vaccinate their children because of their religious beliefs.
“The media is portraying the unvaccinated as uneducated,” Siemens told Children’s Health Defense’s publication Defender on Tuesday. She said the unvaccinated families she knows “did more reading than those who say, ‘My doctor says [to get the shot], and I’m going to listen to my doctor.’”
“It’s not like, ‘Oh we’re so anxious, this is an outbreak, we got to really be scared,’ Siemens told the Washington Post earlier this week. “You work through it and you learn from your hardships and you get stronger because of it.”
Following Kennedy’s remarks about Vitamin A, some members of the anti-vaccine community have begun to tout unproven measles remedies. One such influencer is Stella Immanuel, the Texas doctor whose viral 2020 video falsely claimed that the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine was a Covid cure. Immanuel, who has also insisted that female reproductive problems were caused by having sex with demons, is currently selling elderberry and zinc supplements she says can “strengthen your immunity against measles.” One “bundle” she recommends, called CoviLyte, costs $170 and has been sold in her online store since the pandemic.
The Weston A. Price Foundation, a group that advocates for diets based around animal fats and has promoted raw milk, posted on X this week to its 43,000 followers, that measles “is not the disease it is portrayed as, nor has it ever been eradicated with a vaccine as we’ve often been told. What we refer to as measles characterizes symptoms that can be treated with vitamin A-rich foods.” Those claims have absolutely no basis in scientific fact.
Siemens didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones. At the time of publication, the fundraiser had collected just shy of $5,000 in donations.
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an 2 25
Last fall, before being named the senior U.S. health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the Trump administration would liberate Americans from the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of vitamins, dietary supplements, and other substances — ending the federal agency’s “war on public health,” as he put it.
In fact, the FDA can’t even require that supplements be effective before they are sold. When Congress, at the agency’s urging, last considered legislation to require makers of vitamins, herbal remedies, and other pills and potions to show proof of their safety and worth before marketing the products, it got more negative mail, phone calls, and telegrams than at any time since the Vietnam War, by some accounts. The backlash resulted in a 1994 law that enabled the dietary supplement industry to put its products on the market without testing and to tout unproven benefits, as long as the touting doesn’t include claims to treat or cure a disease. Annual industry revenues have grown from $4 billion to $70 billion since.
With Kennedy now in the driver’s seat, the industry will likely expect more: It aims to make bolder health claims for its products and even get the government, private insurers, and flexible spending accounts to pay for supplements, essentially putting them on an equal footing with FDA-approved pharmaceuticals.
On Feb. 13, the day Kennedy was sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services, President Donald Trump issued a “Make America Healthy Again” agenda targeting alleged corruption in health regulatory agencies and instructing them to “ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and the flexibility for health insurance coverage to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.”
Kennedy has said exercise, dietary supplements, and nutrition, rather than pharmaceutical products, are key to good health. Supplement makers want consumers to be able to use programs like health savings accounts, Medicare, and even benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to pay for such items as vitamins, fish oil, protein powders, and probiotics.
“Essentially they’re seeking a government subsidy,” said Pieter Cohen, a Harvard University physician who studies supplements.
As the Senate Finance Committee questioned Kennedy during his Jan. 29 confirmation hearing, supporters in the Alliance for Natural Health lunched on quinoa salad in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center and crowed that the moment had finally arrived for their health freedom movement, which has combined libertarian capitalism and mistrust of the medical establishment to champion unregulated compounds since the 19th century.
“The greatest opportunity of our lifetimes is before us,” said Jonathan Emord, the group’s general counsel, who has brought many successful lawsuits against the FDA’s restrictions on unproven health claims. “RFK has dedicated his whole life to opposing the undue influence” of the pharmaceutical industry and “assuring that our interests triumph,” Emord said.
In speeches and in a pamphlet called “The MAHA Mandate,” Emord and alliance founder Robert Verkerk said Kennedy would free companies to make greater claims for their products’ alleged benefits. Emord said his group was preparing to sue the FDA to prevent it from restricting non-pharmaceutical production of substances like biopeptides — complex molecules related to drugs like Ozempic.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not respond to a request for comment on the agency’s plans vis-à-vis dietary supplements.
While the basic law governing the FDA establishes that a substance alleged to have treatment or curative effects is by definition a “drug,” and therefore comes under the agency’s requirements for high standards of scientific evidence, the new administration could reallocate money away from enforcement, said Mitch Zeller, former head of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
As a Senate aide early in his career, Zeller investigated a tainted L-tryptophan supplement that killed at least 30 people and sickened thousands in the U.S. in 1989. The scandal led the FDA to seek heavier regulation of supplements, but a powerful backlash resulted in the relatively weak supplements law of 1994.
Even that law’s enforcement could be undercut with a stroke of the pen that would keep FDA inspectors out of the field, Zeller said.
Sweeping changes couldn’t come too soon for Nathan Jones, founder and CEO of Xlear, a company that makes products containing xylitol, an artificial sweetener. The Federal Trade Commission sued Xlear in 2021 for making what it called false claims that its nasal spray could prevent and treat covid.
Jones points to a handful of studies evaluating whether xylitol prevents cavities and infections, saying the FDA would require overly expensive studies to get xylitol approved as a drug. Meanwhile, he said, dentists have been bought out by “Big Toothpaste.”
One can hardly find any products “without fluoride for oral health,” he said. “Crest and Colgate don’t want it to happen,” he said.
Kennedy’s desire to rid water supplies of fluoride because of its alleged impact on children’s IQ is welcome news, he said, and not only because it could highlight the value of his products. Jones stresses, as do many health freedom advocates, that clean air and water and unadulterated food do more to prevent and cure disease than vaccines and drugs. For example, he and other advocates claim, wrongly, that the United States eliminated the crippling disease polio through better sanitation, not vaccination.
The Alliance for Natural Health hopes that in lieu of strict FDA standards, Kennedy will enable companies to make expanded marketing claims based on evidence from non-FDA sources, Verkerk said, such as the National Institutes of Health’s nutritional information site, which describes the pros and cons of different supplements.
Kennedy has also called for relaxing the strictures on psychedelic drugs, which interest some veterans as potential remedies for such conditions as post-traumatic stress disorder. VETS, a San Diego-based organization, has paid for 1,000 veterans to get treatment with the powerful hallucinogen ibogaine at clinics in Mexico and other countries, said the group’s co-founder Amber Capone.
She got involved after her husband, a retired Navy SEAL, pulled out of a suicidal spiral after spending a week at an ibogaine clinic near Tijuana, Mexico, in 2017. She wants NIH, the Defense Department, and the Department of Veterans Affairs to fund research on the illegal substance — which can cause cardiac complications and is listed as a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin and LSD — so it can be made legally available when appropriate.
Coincidentally, the push for less onerous standards on supplements and psychedelics would come while Kennedy is demanding “gold-standard science” to review preservatives and other food additives that he has said could play a role in the country’s high rate of chronic diseases.
“Put aside the fact that there’s precious little evidence to support” that idea, said Stuart Pape, a former FDA food center attorney. “There’s been no indication they want the same rigor for supplements and nutraceuticals.”
Although most of these products don’t have major safety concerns, “we have no idea which products work, so in the best case people are throwing away a ton of money,” Zeller said. “The worst-case scenario is they are relying on unproven products to treat underlying conditions, and time is going by when they could have been using more effective FDA-authorized products for diseases.”
Supplement makers aren’t entirely unified. Groups such as the Consumer Healthcare Products Association and the Council for Responsible Nutrition have advocated for the FDA to crack down on products that are unsafe or falsely represented. The Alliance for Natural Health and the Natural Products Association, meanwhile, largely want the government to get out of the way.
“The time has come to embrace a radical shift — from reactive disease management to proactive health cultivation, from top-down public health diktats to personalized, individual-centric care,” Emord and Verkerk state in their “MAHA Mandate.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
MMA
These are the companies paying to advertise on RNC co-chair Lara Trump's podcast
WRITTEN BY JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES
PUBLISHED 06/18/24
On her podcast, RNC co-chair Lara Trump maintains a collection of conservative-branded utility, doomsday prep, and supplement company sponsors. Throughout her show, Trump has promoted election denial and conspiracy theories which claim that Democrats will try to steal the 2024 election.
In the 41 episodes between March 8, when she was elected co-chair, and June 12, Lara did ad reads for the following 8 sponsors: Association of Mature American Citizens, Patriot Mobile, MyPillow, Swiss America, Balance of Nature, ReadyWise, UpWellness, and Googipet.
The Association of Mature American Citizens — whose advocacy arm, AMAC Action, is a Project 2025 partner — publishes content to persuade members that the 2024 election will be stolen partially because of “universal mail-in voting,” a method that Trump has been trying to persuade skeptical Republican voters can now be trusted. Trump advertised for AMAC 16 times in this period.
Still of Lara Trump next to AMAC logo
CitationScreenshot of the April 4, 2024, edition of The Right View
Patriot Mobile is a Christian nationalist cell phone service provider with ties to figures who promote the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” or “the belief that Christians are called on to dominate the seven key ‘mountains’ of American life, including business, media, government and education.” Trump advertised for Patriot Mobile in all episodes, or 41 times, in this period.
Still of Lara Trump next to Patriot Mobile logo and above discount code
CitationScreenshot of the May 7, 2024, edition of The Right View
MyPillow is owned by election denier and Trump ally Mike Lindell, who is currently in the throes of two defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. Trump advertised for MyPillow 29 times in this period.
Still of Lara Trump next to MyPillow logo
CitationScreenshot of the May 9, 2024, edition of The Right View
Swiss America is a gold and silver trading company, for which Trump promotes “The Secret War on Cash,” a report warning consumers about Democrat lawmakers supposedly pushing for a “digital dollar that could allow the government to tell us what we can and cannot buy,” and teaching them how to protect themselves from such “threats facing our freedom and your hard-earned money.” Trump advertised for Swiss America 27 times in this period.
Still of Lara Trump above Swiss America logo
CitationScreenshot of the March 26, 2024, edition of The Right View
Balance of Nature is a supplement company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, advertising watchdog Truth in Advertising filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that the company was falsely claiming that its products could prevent coronavirus infection. Trump advertised for Balance of Nature 9 times in the allotted period.
Still of Lara Trump above the Balance of Nature logo
CitationScreenshot of the March 28, 2024, edition of The Right View
ReadyWise is an emergency food kit company. Trump advertised for it 12 times in this period.
Still of Lara Trump next to ReadyWise logo and discount code
CitationScreenshot of the June 5, 2024, edition of The Right View
UpWellness is a supplement company. Trump advertised for it 11 times in this period.
Still of Lara Trump next to UpWellness logo and discount code
CitationScreenshot of the May 29, 2024, edition of The Right View
Googipet is a dog-oriented supplement company. Trump advertised for it 17 times in this period.
Still of Lara Trump next to googipet logo
CitationScreenshot of the April 24, 2024, edition of The Right View
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mma 5 24 grift
Daily Wire announced the launch of a new “men’s lifestyle” company named Responsible Man on May 1, promoting its only current product — a men’s dietary supplement that it says is “designed to help … sharpen brain cognition” and that it suggests will help address what the outlet calls the “increasing health risk” of declining “sperm concentration.”
On April 30, The Daily Wire’s parent company Bentkey Ventures registered the assumed name “Daily Wire Ventures.” The next day, on May 1, it debuted Responsible Man, a new company for men’s health products.
The Daily Wire is promoting Responsible Man as an alternative to “woke” companies and by fearmongering about some of the outlet’s frequent targets, namely gender-affirming care and drag queens, asking its readers, “Do you want to buy your men’s health products from a company that partners with drag queens and supports radical organizations that push gender procedures on children?” Responsible Man’s website uses similar language, promising its customers that “together, we can reclaim masculinity” and claiming that “Emerson’s Vitamins are a simple step towards improving yourself, creating order, and building the future.”
Video
CitationAd from Responsible Man's website
The Daily Wire’s promotion suggests Responsible Man’s products can help address various health issues, including the purported “increasing health risk” of declining “sperm concentration” worldwide, promising to help men stay healthy “for the survival of the human race.”
The company’s only product, a men’s multivitamin, is marketed as being “professionally engineered by medical doctors” to “support your immune system, maintain energy production, sharpen brain cognition, and support the health of your heart and muscles.”
Claims made by The Daily Wire’s new company are not FDA-approved
According to disclaimers on Responsible Man’s website, the claims made to promote the company’s vitamins “have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” Multivitamins do not need to go through an evaluation process prior to entering the marketplace, and have generally proved ineffective in reducing the risk of heart disease and mental decline.
In the past, The Daily Wire has targeted certain medications used in gender-affirming care for trans youth for their use off-label without FDA approval, even though this is a common practice in prescribing pediatric medications. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been particularly fervent in wielding this point to target gender-affirming care.
The Daily Wire is promoting the new company by targeting Men’s Health magazine
The Daily Wire’s previous ventures into consumer goods have been framed in opposition to specific companies it deemed too “woke,” such as Harry’s Razors and Hershey’s Chocolate, for refusing to advertise with The Daily Wire and featuring a trans woman in an advertisement, respectively. (Jeremy’s Razors and Jeremy’s Chocolate, The Daily Wire’s answers to Harry’s and Hershey’s going “woke,” have received poor feedback from customers.)
The Daily Wire’s promotion of Responsible Man singles out for criticism Men’s Health, the largest men’s lifestyle magazine in the United States. Claiming that Men’s Health was “afraid of manhood itself,” The Daily Wire has declared itself “here to give you a better option.” The lone source of outrage cited by the outlet is a Men’s Health article from November 2021 on “LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy.”
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alternet-no lnx
Russian banker who loaned Trump’s Truth Social $8M reportedly has 'family links to Kremlin'
Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2019 (Creative Commons)
:{:{Alex HendersonApril 22, 2024}:
Even after X CEO Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump's @RealDonaldTrump account, the former president has continued to use his own Truth Social as his primary social media platform. Trump's last post on X was on August 24, 2023, but he uses Truth Social frequently.
Truth Social, launched in August 2022, is part of Trump Media and Technology Group — which is now publicly traded. One of Truth Social's backers was Anton Postolnikov, a 40-year-old Russian banker who loaned the outlet $8 million.
According to the Daily Beast, Postolnikov reportedly has "family links" to the Kremlin and made a lot of money with websites that sold "dodgy sex pills."
READ MORE:Putin, Trump and Netanyahu unveil the terrifying perils of strongman rule
"The flagship product sold by these sites, Vimax — which promises longer sex and a firmer erection — has prompted warnings from health regulators in the U.S. for containing hidden ingredients that may endanger health," journalists Matt Bernardini and Matei Rosca explain in an article published on April 22. "The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to buy the supposedly natural male enhancement supplements, and told anyone who had bought the tablets to throw them out."
The reporters add, "The sites where the pills were sold included vimaxtrialoffer.com, which was registered in the name of Anton Postolnikov, 40, according to public domain ownership records."
Postolnikov has a strong connection to MAGA politics.
In addition to helping Truth Social get started, he donated $30,000 to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, according to Bernardini and Rosca.
READ MORE: Wall Street is now betting on Trump’s Truth Social stock to fail
"In (2021), documents show that a company listing Postolnikov as its 'authorized person' owned two dwellings on Miami’s private Fisher Island worth $13 million," Bernardini and Rosca report. "The company that owns the luxury properties, 7812 Fisher Island LLC, is the subject of ongoing divorce proceedings in Florida where Postolnikov is splitting from Olga, a fellow native of St. Petersburg who describes herself as a photojournalist…. Before his alleged foray into Florida high finance, Postolnikov was involved in the selling of Vimax, which was sold via offshore companies in the U.S., Cyprus, and Mauritius, according to the products' websites."
READ MORE: Truth Social lost millions last year: SEC filing
Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/orrin-hatch-made-country-worse/
an 4 22
...
Once he was elected, all that talk about term limits went away real fast. He was elected again and again, never seriously challenged by a Democrat. He defeated the mayor of Salt Lake City by 17 points in 1982 and then Frank Moss’ son Brian by 35 points in 1988.By this point, Utah was a full-on frothing rightwing cesspool. The state that once elected quite decent senators was now a place where Orrin Hatch could be seen as a relative moderate. He won reelection again in 1994, 2000, 2006 and 2012 without any real competition.
Hatch was a hired hack of the vitamin supplement industry. This might seem like a strange issue to be tied to. But the supplement industry is huge in Utah and Hatch had a lot of relatives involved.
So he did everything in his considerable power to protect this industry from any regulation at all, including revealing what is in them. When Hatch left the Senate, Michael Hiltzik’s farewell in the LA Times reminded us of how “his deadliest law will live on.”
This was the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Effectively, this eliminated government supervision of the supplement industry, allowing hucksters and scammers to put whatever they wanted in these things. Specifically, it stopped the Food and Drug Administration from reviewing these supplements ahead of time.
The FDA could later pull a product if it was found to be poisonous but that would come only after such poison was proven. This was a massive perversion of the entire point of the FDA and also the near-prototype for how Republicans see the world and how they want to take America back to the Gilded Age.
As Hiltzik noted, this had hugely negative consequences in the real world, such as when a supplement sold in Hawaii sent 47 people to the hospital with liver problems, resulting in three liver transplants and one death. Finally, it was pulled off the market. That’s entirely on Orrin Hatch.
Of course, Hatch’s son worked as a supplement industry lobbyist and two of the largest three campaign donors for Hatch in 2010 were Herbalife and Xango LLC, a supplement marketing firm. And when John McCain introduced a bill to mandate reports of illnesses from supplements, Hatch backed him down.
So everytime you hear someone getting seriously ill or dying from supplements, you can thank Orrin Hatch.
Not as clean as you’d think
Almost every position taken by Hatch was horrible. He was the author of the vile Hatch Amendment, his idea for aconstitutional amendmentreading, “A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution. The Congress and the several States shall have the concurrent power to restrict and prohibit abortions: Provided, That a law of a State which is more restrictive than a law of Congress shall govern.”...
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/qanon-2653524968/
Reporter Laura J. Nelson, in an article published by the Los Angeles Times on June 23, takes a look at Californians who have an unlikely combination of beliefs: they are into new age ideology, but are also QAnon supporters.
"A world that has long embraced love, light and acceptance is now making room for something else: QAnon," Nelson reports. "More commonly associated with right-wing groups, the conspiracy theory is spreading through yoga, meditation and other wellness circles. Friends and colleagues have watched with alarm as Instagram influencers and their New Age peers — yogis, energy healers, sound bathers, crystal practitioners, psychics, quantum magicians — embraced QAnon's conspiratorial worldview and sprayed it across social media."
QAnon is a far-right movement that promotes bizarre and outlandish conspiracy theories. According to QAnon, the United States' federal government has been taken over by an international cabal of pedophiles, child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals — and former President Donald Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal. Well-known pro-QAnon extremists in the Republican Party include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
The fact that QAnon has made inroads with far-right Christian fundamentalist evangelicals isn't surprising; the Christian right has long been prone to conspiracy theorists. But the new age community in California seems an unlikely place for QAnon to make inroads.
Nelson, however, reports, "The health, wellness and spirituality world has always been primed for that worldview, followers say. Though largely filled with well-meaning people seeking spiritual or physical comfort, the $1.5-trillion industry can also be a hotbed for conspiracies, magical thinking, dietary supplements with dubious scientific claims and distrust of institutional healthcare, including vaccines."
Julian Walker, a Mar Vista yogi who hosts a podcast called "Conspirituality," told the Times, "It's always been the water we were swimming in. Now, we're seeing what happens when the water rises."
The violent insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 included supporters of QAnon as well as members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and other far-right Trump supporters. And some of those QAnon supporters, Nelson points out, embrace new age beliefs.
Nelson explains, "Several New Age spiritualists in Southern California interviewed by the Times said they knew a total of more than a dozen former friends and colleagues at the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with ties to yoga, meditation, energy healing and dietary supplements hawked by multilevel marketing companies. Jake Angeli, whose face paint and horned headgear during the Capitol riot earned him the nickname'the QAnon Shaman,' carried a sign at earlier protests that read, 'Q Sent Me,' and successfully petitioned a federal judge on religious grounds to receive only organic food in jail. One of the best known of the rioters isAlan Hostetter, a ponytailed former police chief, yoga teacher and sound healer from Orange County who spoke at a QAnon conferenceand was indicted by federal officials this month."
Los Angeles-based yoga instructor Seane Corn, who co-founded the group Off the Mat, Into the World, has been warning others in the new age community that QAnon is dangerous.
"Corn was among the wellness leaders who shared a statement in September warning that QAnon's tactics resembled cult psychology and that the ideology would sow confusion, division and paranoia," Nelson reports. "Corn estimates she knows at least ten people who embraced 'hardcore QAnon,' including two people who participated in the attack on the Capitol — and is aware of more than 30 colleagues and peers who subscribe to some forms of the ideology, as well as a 'countless' number of yoga students. Corn said she has watched bots and real-life QAnon devotees try to harness her social media comment sections as a recruiting ground, using 'wellness language and nonviolent communication' in an attempt to lead her followers toward more conspiratorial thinking.
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see mlm trump
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AN 819
no lnx
The stupid merchandise conservatives buy in their endless pursuit to ‘stick it to the libs’
Tomi Lahren athletic wear
Written by Doctor RJ / Daily Kos August 28, 2019
In their decades long resentment fueled quest to achieve government by spite, conservatives have not only sacrificed their souls, but also their wallets. Giving one’s money, time, and effort to horrible human beings in order to achieve disgusting policies is one things. But buying horrible crap just because it has some stars and stripes which these idiots say represent America and Jesus, or diet supplements with a label stating how “alpha” it is and promises to be “rock hard” in making their dick better than liberal cucks, while being promoted and hocked by the latest right-wing dipshit, well … that’s a whole other sad story.
Late last week, Fox News personality Tomi Lahren announced her “Freedom” line of athletic wear,which is being marketed specifically as “a brand that represents their freedom … a brand that represents their rights.” Lahren, who seems to be living proof hair bleach may cause brain damage, has made her bones by being Fox’s young conservative voice of millennials. However, she’s also infamous for not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, even among the dull selection of conservative nitwits which make up the pundit stable. Lahren infamously showed her lack of depth when she admitted to still being on her parents’ health insurance moments after criticizing Obamacare, which she wouldn’t have been able to do if the law didn’t exist, and received intense criticism this year when she claimed Sen. Kamala Harris had slept her way to the top.
Partnering with Alexo Athletica, a brand which makes clothing with gun holsters inside of them, the athletic line will include a bra top for $52, a sweater for $69, leggings at $89, and a bomber jacket for $99, designed around having a space for a “small self-defense tool,” which Lahren claims is “about freedom, it’s about the bill of rights, it’s about constitutional freedoms” in support of Donald Trump and the United States. However, there are two problems. Buying star-spangled polyester is a dubious argument for patriotism. And reports indicate that just like many of the bearing the name of the current president, Lahren’s clothing is being made in China.
Lahren’s is but one of many on the right-wing side of things which has embraced merchandising, and linked its sale to support of conservatism and patriotism in America. Trump himself has basically been using his position to grift supporters out of their money in selling t-shirts, straws, and other knick-knacks, and this has been true among other conservative special interests as well. The fact there are people attempting to make money off of bullshit is not new, or is it unexpected. But it is interesting to ponder the market for products whose only distinctive appeal is based on ideology, and the thought-process of the dummies who buy into all of this mess, especially in a country where the values people care about are becoming more divergent among different political ideologies.
When I went to a Trump rally back in 2016, one of the things which stood out was something which happened whil walking into the rally. Around the entrance to the event, there were a throng of vendors selling MAGA hats, Trump books, and other assorted crap which would give trash a bad name. But the juxtaposition between right-wing jagoffs screaming: “Get your ‘Bomb the shit out of ISIS’ buttons,” not far from a Girl Scout troop who had decided to use the rally to sell cookies, seemed to say it all about the combination of projected American values and unseemliness. And that combo has held true into the Trump presidency and become more and more the defining quality of the conservative movement. It comes from the same disgraceful place where the same people who want to defend the American flag from NFL players who kneel in protest then support every policy which defiles what that flag represents, even when it means concentration camps and support for white nationalist rhetoric.
The sale of conservative merchandise embraces the same “fake news” resentment of reality and what is true, and then asks the same group of people who vote against their own interests to now personally spend their money in the same way.
From Christina Zhao on Newsweek:
Lahren, 27, announced her new clothing line,“Freedom,” on Instagram last week. “Some have told me I’m too ‘controversial’ to have an athleisure line, that conservatives should just stick to politics and Trump cheerleading,” the Fox personality wrote, alongside a poster advertising the new brand. “My response? Watch me. Introducing Freedom by Tomi Lahren by @alexoathleticafull line available now.” Designed to represent patriotism, the line boasts clothing in red, white and blue as well as some items decorated with stars to loosely resemble the American flag. The line was created with active wear brand Alexo Athletica, a company known for producing clothing featuring gun holsters.
Shortly after Freedom’s launch, social media users quickly moved to accuse Lahren of producing her line in China. Freelance writer Robyn Pennacchia tweeted a screenshot of a conversation between someone selling a Alexo Athletica piece online and a potential buyer. When asked to list the materials used, the vendor responded: “It’s 95 percent polyester and 5 percent spandex. Made in China though.” … Twitter user @JordanUhl pointed out that Lahren’s allegedly made in China clothing line comes just one month after the television personality called on companies to make their products in America during a Fox Nation “Final Thoughts” segment on July 17th.
“As it stands, products used for government projects can carry the ‘Made in America’ logo with parts made of 50 percent foreign components but not under this president,” Lahren said in the segment. “Trump signed an executive order raising the percentage of American components to 75 percent. That’s right baby, made in the U.S.A.” … “He talks the talk and walks the walk. In America, it’s Americans first. We should come first in our own dang country and in under this president, we do,” the 27-year-old host added
Robyn Pennacchia
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@RobynElyse
I am shocked, shocked to find out that Tomi Lahren's Athleisure line for women who don't hate America is... Made In China.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
2,729
This sort of merchandising is very common among right-wing morons.
Another Fox shithead,Ben Shapiro, has been using his talk-show to market dietary supplementswhich use antioxidants, prebiotics, and probiotics.
The king of merging politics and overpriced supplements is conspiracy loon Alex Jones, who urged his viewers to buy more supplements to show their disapproval of recent bans from social media platforms. Beyond iffy and unscientific claims, Jones will now have to deal with new scrutiny from the FDA going forward.
Paul Krugman
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@paulkrugman
- Aug 21, 2018
Replying to @paulkrugman
I first learned about the close affiliation between right-wingers and direct-order scams from @rickperlstein: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con …
The Long Con
Mitt Romney is a liar. Of course, in some sense, all politicians, even all human beings, are liars. Romney’s lying went so over-the-top extravagant by this summer, though, that the New York Times…
thebaffler.com
Paul Krugman
?
@paulkrugman
Alex Jones fits the model perfectly http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/how-does-alex-jones-make-money.html …
The Whole Point of Infowars Is to Sell Diet Supplements
How does Alex Jones make money? It’s not advertising, and it’s not subscriptions.
nymag.com
While it’s shouldn’t be surprising a guy which has been in court about the Emoluments Clause and wants to pimp his own golf resort for an international conference would attempt to make money off of the presidency, the Trump campaign resorting to selling plastic straws to MAGA idiots for a $1.50 per straw in order to stoke the Republican base’s anger towards companies trying to be environmentally friendly by switching to environmentally friendly paper straws struck a nerve earlier this year. It was the sort of spiteful “fuck the environment because it’ll piss the other side off” move which has defined the past three years
A Medellin, Colombia-based direct marketing company, FlowActiv, sold “The Shepherd’s Diet” to Christian conservatives and MAGA Republicans on the claim it was Biblically based and recommended by Jesus, when in fact it was basically just a warmed-over version of the Keto and Paleo diets.
From Jed Oelbaum at Vice:
The marketing pitched the diet to a holy trinity of older Americans, religious people, and the heart of MAGA America, with ads that sold it as “Donald Trump’s Plan to Make America Thin Again,” advertorials on sites like Teaparty.org, and spots that warned of “leftist food corporations” that are “terrified” of consumers taking up the diet.
Other pitches clearly targeted Christians with pop-up ads and “one weird trick”–style offers touting the program as a secret technique “hidden in the bible” that “burns fat overnight.” One bit of ad copy claimed “2,000-year-old nutritional scrolls that biblical scholars recently uncovered are bringing new hope to Americans who struggle with knowing what to eat.” Also marketed with alternate brand names like “Biblical Belly Breakthrough” and “The Truth About Fats,” at one point the program was seemingly renamed, switching from primarily “The Shepherd’s Diet” to “The Shepherd’s Code.” (In Spanish, the plan goes by “La Dieta de Jesus.”)
Less than a year later, the Shepherd’s Diet, was gone, leaving a trail of misleading ads, questionable charges, and broken weight-loss dreams. Some fans of the diet say it helped them lose weight and get in shape. But other customers told VICE News that it’s a “scam” targeted at Christian consumers. Either way, its story is a glimpse into the growing online landscape of unaccountable businesses hawking shady products to Christians and conservatives in the Trump era.
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