Drop your programs for the BassMaster Classic, folks. Fox News has, according to this Yahoo report, aired some deliciously misleading video prior to a Ron Paul interview. We know you’re shocked, and certainly understand your reaction as Fox News has NEVER, EVER deliberately distorted anything, like, ever.

According to the report, Fox aired a video clip that by inference made it appear that Ron Paul greeted a chorus of boos related to a straw poll Ron Paul won at the the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference.

According to the article, “Paul supporters have claimed that Fox News—which some might expect to promote an establishment Republican over the anti-establishment Paul—intentionally aired the wrong footage to place Paul in a negative light against runner-up Mitt Romney.”

Unquote.

The sad thing? There’s really no need to generate ill will toward Ron Paul. We at the stupid are convinced that he’s risen as high as he’ll ever go and is absolutely no threat whatsoever to anyone’s political career–unless you count Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.

Ron Paul can’t possibly defeat a serious Presidential candidate due to a variety of factors including public image and other things completely unrelated to the man’s politics but sure to spell his political doom. He simply hasn’t got the aura. But put Ron Paul up against Sarah Palin in a debate of any kind and watch him OWN that debate from start to finish. It’s a no-contest contest we’d love to witness but one that will likely never happen.

Back to Fox…we remember when a program that had the word NEWS in its title–let alone an entire network–was held to a certain standard. These days, those standards are harder to find in action. Fox can’t possibly be blamed for acting like itself any more than you can be angry at a dog for wagging its tail…but we certainly should mock them at every available opportunity as “The Network Of Nonsense”.

The Daily Stupid is, without a doubt, every bit as knee-jerk and moronic as Fox News. We certainly don’t adhere to any journalistic standards of ANY kind round here. But what makes US different from THEM is that WE don’t call this crap NEWS or even pretend that it has any relevance in the REAL WORLD.

Fox News on the other hand is able to pull the wool over the eyes of plenty of under-educated, overly excited sheeple who can’t manage to rub two brain cells together for five seconds to THINK about the nonsense they hear on the television set. Not all Fox News viewers are morons, but without a doubt JUST ENOUGH OF THEM ARE.

Fox airs misleading footage before Ron Paul interview

Diet soda stroke? The news reports seem clear enough–if you drink diet soda you are definitely, definitely going to have a stroke and a heart attack and die, die, die.

But WE hear that the study this is based on–not that we contest it in any way–was a bit skewed. But let’s look at some factoids for a second.

In spite of the possibility that the study between the University of Miami and Columbia University is flawed because of the sample (the report we heard said there wasn’t a wide enough of a cross-section of participants–not enough diversity) we’d consider the report a good HINT.

And that hint, which seems awfully obvious to us, is STOP DRINKING SODA.

People seem to think that because there’s no SUGAR listed in these drinks that it’s perfectly ok to drink three and four of them a day. But Aspartame is said to have nasty effects on those who drink so much of it. Don’t even get us started on saccharine.

Splenda, the sweetener in Pepsi One and other drinks is marketed as a “zero calorie” sweetener but in reality it has about three calories per gram of sweetener, according to our sources. (There are 40 MG of Splenda in an eight ounce serving and each can of Pepsi one is 12 ounces.) They get away with that crap, we’re told, because of a loophole in the food labeling laws.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about it, but read at your own risk–we’re all aware of the accuracy problems Wikipedia can be plagued with even at the best of times:

“Such labeling is appropriate in the U.S. because the FDA’s regulations permit a product to be labeled as “zero calories” if the ‘food contains less than 5 calories per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving.” Because Splenda contains a relatively small amount of sucralose, little of which is metabolized, virtually all of Splenda’s caloric content derives from the highly fluffed dextrose or maltodextrin bulking agents that give Splenda its volume. Like other carbohydrates, dextrose and maltodextrin have 3.75 calories per gram.”

But enough math. It’s stupid to think you can just guzzle four cans of soda per day with no ill effects, sweetener or not. Same goes for eating four bowls of cereal, drinking four cups of coffee, smoking four packs a day, yada yada.

Here’s an idea…how about switching from soda to something else entirely? Why SODA? Are you people really drinking all that syrupy vileness four times a day? Once in a while seems fine and not excessive. But FOUR CANS PER DAY? Allow us to throw in a big W…T…F.

We’ll just go on record here saying that anybody who gets a stroke because they drank four cans of soda per day probably doesn’t DESERVE it, but they come awfully damn close.  Get on an exercise bike and eat a friggin carrot already.

Sarah Palin was quoted by Reuters as saying “This is not the road to national greatness, it is the road to ruin,” as she warbled on about government spending, the deficit, and all the other woes the U.S. inherited in the wake of eight years of seemingly unrestricted spending on two wars, Bush tax breaks, and let’s not forget that John Ashcroft project where 12 million taxpayer dollars were spent to arrest Tommy Chong for selling glass pipes on the Internet.

Sarah Palin clearly has the same kind of selective memory as the followers of Jimmy Swaggart or Pat Robertson. Palin seems to think spending money on infrastructure would lead to national bankruptcy, but like the rest of her shrill rhetoric, she proposes no alternative solutions. She just whines about what she disagrees with and leaves it at that.

We at the Daily Stupid REALLY hope she runs for President in 2012. It would be the greatest contest ever witnessed, right after the Rumble in the Jungle with Muhammad Ali beating the living daylights out of a younger George Foreman. Obama in this corner with Yale, his Senate experience, and four years of experience in the Oval Office behind him versus Sarah Palin with…whatever she’s got besides a half-governorship in Alaska that she bailed on.

Yes, we WANT Sarah “Conehead” Palin to run for President in 2012. And again in 2016. And again in 2030. Until they have to exhume her bones and run THEM for president, we want her to run. Any candidate–even the reanimated corpse of Barry Goldwater–could beat her soundly if Palin opens her mouth in any presidential debate for any reason whatsoever.

Twenty inches of snow in Chicago…there were 300 abandoned cars on Lake Shore Drive and there are still thousands of people without power. We blame God, whoever that is, for inflicting this mess. But what’s really ridiculous is that anyone was surprised by the storm–including people with tickets on all 2200 canceled flights to and from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. After all, this storm had at least a two-day advance warning…but people will be people and book their tickets or try to drive home on Lakeshore Drive ANYWAY.

But even dumber is that the insanity in Egypt has been overshadowed by a bunch of blowing snow. What happens there in the next year could affect the entire region for half a century…and the midwest is wrapped around the axles about abandoned cars and 20 inches of snow.

Sure, it’s a local issue that affects schools, highways and etc…but the Egypt uprising is equally important and we at the Stupid are wishing we could learn more about what’s happening there in between the half hour long weatherman exposition and snow plow reports. Ahh well…back to your regularly scheduled nap.

Rush Limbaugh has been many things. Narrow-minded, hypocritical, ignorant are just a few of those things, but with his latest utterance of controversy, the now-infamous slurs uttered in reference to Chinese president Hu Jintao’s speech, it’s clear that Limbaugh is essentially a Klan hat with the power of speech.

When a Klan hat is visible in a room, it causes immediate consternation. The very presence of a Klan hat is enough to cause people to be fired, even arrested. The same could be said of Limbaugh, after a fashion. His grade-school mocking of another language and culture–one apparently too frightening to Limbaugh to even attempt to understand–has probably not alienated any of his hard core. But let Limbaugh show up anyplace next week where Asian people, their friends, neighbors and co-workers are, and see the reaction. Limbaugh may as well have “Grand Wizard” tattooed on his forehead now.

However insensitive his little outburst was, we’re fortunate to have it recorded for posterity. It’s another case of the rock being lifted so the rest of us can see what’s wriggling in the slime beneath. Limbaugh has always been boorish, a highly paid buffoon dancing for the amusement of the politically clueless. But with this we see him in the cold, harsh light of day; a tiny-minded narcotics addict who sees nothing wrong with diving into the same racist cesspool of thought as the most inbred Klan member.

We didn’t mind so much when he limited his spew to cartoonish political figures or causes with which we had little connection. But the Limbaugh speaking in tongues incident shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in another age with a different set of rules and movtivations, Limbaugh could have been Joe McCarthy, Algier Hiss or maybe even Martin Bormann.

Will ANYTHING make Limbaugh shut up and go away forever? Doubtful. As long as there is ignorance and stupidity as common as hyrdogen, we will have Limbaugh and his wannabes cluttering up the airwaves.