You are what you eat

Okay, this is getting just way beyond pathetic. I think it was Tom Tomorrow who remarked a while back that satire is dead because the news is producing it faster than you can. This is from AP for August 12:

"Cues from chatter" gathered around the world are raising concerns that terrorists might try to attack the domestic food and drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs, acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford says. ...

Crawford said the possibility of such an attack was the most serious of his concerns about the increase in states and municipalities trying to import drugs from Canada to save money.

The FDA is under increasing pressure to allow for the import of prescription medications from Canada, where they can be obtained often for a fraction of what the same drug costs in the US. The agency has made a series of bogus excuses in covering for the pharmaceutical industry, claiming its only concern is the protection of consumers from unsafe, ineffective meds. As part of this the agency consistently calls them "illegally imported" - which, while technically true, still attempts to linguistically tie them to other "illegally imported" substances like, say, heroin or cocaine. But the drugs in question are, of course, prescription medicines legally available in Canada and they are only "illegal" because they've crossed the border, not because they are dangerous to anyone or anything except Big Pharma.

But this is just insane. What are we supposed to imagine here? Perhaps this conversation in Toronto:

"Hmmm, Abdul. This is lot #EE789T."

"Ah, Mohammed! That is one of the lots that is going to be illegally exported to the US! Put our diabolical biological agent in that one!"

I mean, how lame can things get? Pretty lame: Crawford

said he was briefed about the al-Qaida threats uncovered by recent arrests and raids. Asked whether the briefing covered potential terror strikes against products the agency regulates — including food and drugs — Crawford declined further comment.

I'll just be he didn't, especially because

"While we must assume that such a threat exists generally, we have no specific information now about any al-Qaida threats to our food or drug supply," said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department.

In other words, there is no actual basis for what Crawford called his "most serious concern." These people are just, just, I don't know, just what is a word for way beyond pathetic?