FA and FO, squillionth edition

 It was The Bulwark piece, January 6th Was a Success, Trump managed to turn his presidency’s darkest day into a political springboard. And now, he’ll seek retribution, that put the pond on to the yarn in the New York Times.

The Bulwark piece was well worth a read in a dark and gloomy way, but the link to the Times' story was FAFO merry, Kennedy’s War on Corn Syrup Brings a Health Crusade to Trump Country When Donald J. Trump said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could “go wild” on health, he might not have expected his pick for health secretary doing battle against the president-elect’s own voters.(paywall)

Jonathan Weisman reported from Decatur and Bloomington, Ill., and it was one of what the pond anticipates will be a tidal wave of stories seeping out of flyover country for the next year, full of FAFO ironies:

The Archer Daniels Midland wet mill on the outskirts of Decatur, Ill., rises like an industrial behemoth from the frozen, harvested cornfields of Central Illinois. Steam billowed in the 20-degree cold last week, as workers turned raw corn into sweet, ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup. Three miles away, a Primient mill, which sprawls across 400 acres divided by North 22nd Street, was doing the same.
To Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, this bedraggled city — set deep in Trump country — is the belly of the agribusiness beast, churning out products that he says poison America, rendering its children obese and its citizens chronically ill.
To the workers here, those mills — the largest in the world — are their livelihoods.
“It’d have a huge impact,” a 37-year-old electrician who would identify himself by only his first name, Tyler, said of Mr. Kennedy’s declaration of war on corn syrup and corn oil. He was grabbing lunch at Debbie’s Diner in the shadow of the mills. “That shuts down Central Illinois, if A.D.M. shuts down.”
Mr. Trump’s alliance with Mr. Kennedy during the presidential campaign was the ultimate marriage of convenience, uniting a right-wing populist presidential candidate with a scion of the nation’s most famous Democratic family, whose appeal to would-be Trump voters rested mainly with his conspiracy theories on Covid-19 and vaccines. Mr. Kennedy said at the time that Mr. Trump had promised him control of the nation’s public health agencies.
Mr. Kennedy’s other track record — on environmental protection and an abiding hatred of America’s unhealthy diet — may have been less of a draw to the fast-food-loving, regulation-hating Mr. Trump, but the former and future president said he would keep Mr. Kennedy’s environmentalism in check while letting him “go wild” on health.
Then Mr. Trump nominated him to head the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services, which has partial purview over America’s diet through a powerful subsidiary, the Food and Drug Administration, and enormous influence on health through its control of Medicare and Medicaid.
Now a brewing battle over corn syrup and vegetable oils is raising the prospect of a fight between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump’s own voters in farm country.
“I may have to spend a lot of time educating him about agriculture,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the largest corn-growing state, just ahead of Illinois, said of Mr. Kennedy last month. “I’m willing to do that.”
Mr. Kennedy’s critique is broad and deep. Generous federal crop subsidies of soy, corn and wheat artificially lower their costs, making byproducts like corn syrup cheaper for manufacturers who put it into everything from soft drinks to hot dogs to heavily processed bread. Crop engineering has made American grains more resilient to drought and pests but rendered them “nutrient barren,” he says, and farming practices have loaded grains with pesticides.

High-fructose corn syrup “is just a formula for making you obese and diabetic,” he has said in promotional videos, often pinning blame for the state of American grain production on Democrats and promising to “immediately” take processed foods out of the school lunch program and ban food stamps from being used to buy processed foods and sweet drinks.
In fact, his most vocal allies on the issue come from the left. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former independent mayor of New York and Democratic donor, waged his own unsuccessful war on corn-syrup-laden soft drinks. On Thursday, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Senate’s most left-wing member who leads the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, pressed the leaders of the F.D.A. at a hearing to label sugary processed food and drink as unhealthy and to restrict advertising of such products.
“For decades, Congress and the F.D.A. have allowed large corporations to make huge profits by enticing children and adults to consume ultra-processed food and beverages loaded up with sugar, salt and saturated fat,” he said, sounding very much like Mr. Kennedy. “None of this is happening by accident.”

Never mind the fluoride, think of the fructose.

The pond's partner has a fetish about fructose syrup, which can bob  up in all sorts of places. Note this list of ingredients in the standard Aldi home brand fruit cake, enough to give a coeliac the shivers:

Sultanas (33%), Raisins (11%), 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐫 (𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐫, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Muscovado Sugar, Pasteurised Free Range Whole 𝐄𝐠𝐠, Butter (𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐤) (7%), Brandy (7%), Glucose-fructose Syrup, Cherries, Water, Nibbed 𝐀𝐥𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐬, Humectant: Vegetable Glycerine; Sugar, Currants, Colour: Plain Caramel; Raisin Juice Concentrate, Orange Zest, Fruit And Vegetable Concentrates (Carrot Concentrate, Aronia Juice Concentrate), Salt, Lemon Zest, Mixed Spices (Cassia, Coriander, Caraway, Nutmeg, Ginger, Cloves, Cinnamon), Raising Agents: Calcium Phosphates, Potassium Carbonate; Orange Oil, Acidity Regulator: Citric Acid; Preservative: 𝐒𝐮𝐥𝐩𝐡𝐮𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐝𝐞.

A little clarification of that glucose-fructose syrup ingredient is in order:

Are GFS, Isoglucose and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) the same thing?
There is a lot of confusion around the terms glucose-fructose syrup, isoglucose and high fructose corn syrup which are often used interchangeably.
GFS may be called differently depending on the country and the fructose content. In Europe, due to ‘isomerisation’ process, GFS with more than 10% fructose is called isoglucose. In turn, when the fructose content exceeds 50%, the name changes to Fructose-Glucose Syrup to reflect the higher content of fructose.
In the United States, the syrup is produced from a maize starch, usually with either 42% or 55% fructose content, hence it is called High Fructose Corn Syrup. (here, with a discussion of the health implications)

But enough of the RFK Jr. paranoia, as Weisman wrapped up his piece this way, celebrating the kind of "it can't happen here, it won't affect me, all will be well" boundless, endless optimism to be found in flyover country, despite many warnings:

Well FA and FO:

...Voters in the farm belt continue to show a deep trust in Mr. Trump, regardless of the impact of his actual policies. At Debbie’s Diner in Decatur, a dozen workers expressed opinions ranging from full-throated support for Mr. Kennedy’s campaign to “make America healthy again” to confidence that the incoming president would protect them from any adverse impacts. Few were particularly worried about their jobs in the short run.
The mills, after all, don’t just make corn syrup. They turn corn into cornstarch, ethanol and livestock feed as well.
“It’d be impacted,” said one mill worker who refused to be named, “but they produce so many other products.”
“Elon will figure it out,” his friend said, referring to Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump adviser.
That faith could insulate Mr. Trump from any potential blowback and help Mr. Kennedy carry out his designs, if he can survive his confirmation process. Earlier this year, a detailed study of the impacts of Mr. Trump’s tariffs during his first term found that the levies had failed to increase the number of jobs in the affected industries, as promised.
But people living in areas most affected by the tariffs — particularly the Midwest and around the Great Lakes — still became more likely to vote for Mr. Trump and less likely to identify as Democrats.

Americans, the study found, are drawn to action, regardless of consequence.

And on that action man note, what a compelling new year it's going to be:

Speaking of FA and FO, Vlad the sociopath style:

Reuters

Atlantic Council

Foreign Affairs

BBC

Oh yes, mission accomplished:

They just forgot to add the sign:

And that's why the pond drinks to the dregs the tears of Vladimir Solovyov and Margarita Simonyan, upset about Syria, tastier than your average Russian vodka: