Update: The cost of Michelle’s plans? $400 MILLION
The other day in her crusade against jelly bellies, Michelle Obama said childhood obesity is a threat to national security. Her reasoning? Obesity is now a major disqualifier for military service. No really, I cannot make this stuff up!
Let me start with the obvious. Her husband, who wants terrorists to have American citizen style rights, is a threat to national security, obesity is just another issue. Also NOT a threat to national security? Global warming, but that is a whole other post.
I am tired of this notion that every issue we face is an epidemic. Obesity is an issue, the black plague was an epidemic. A few years ago anorexia was considered by the left to be an epidemic, now it seems like a solution to the obesity issue.
How are we supposed to take our leaders, let alone doctors and scientists, seriously when they descend to this level of insanity? A few studies and some news articles with faulty reasoning get published and the establishment runs around screaming about the end of the world. Then we waste billions fighting something that is governed by personal choice, never actually solve the problem and move onto the next thing.
I have to throw some honesty in here. I just lost a family member a few weeks ago who struggled with their weight. A gastric bypass only delayed the inevitable and they were found dead, unexpectedly, from a heart attack. Having battled diabetes and other ailments related to weight, it was not hard to figure out what had happened.
It wasn’t the eating. McDonald’s did not force their way into their stomach. It wasn’t from lack of education about calories or scorn from society. There were deeply rooted reasons why they ate and for whatever reason, the solution did not come.
They made a choice. It wasn’t the job of the government to step in and force their hand. Family tried that, friends tried that. Doctors and others tried that. In the end, we all are responsible for ourselves.
Children are the only beings largely not responsible for their own actions and their parents, again, must make the choice. It is not the job of the federal government to step in for these parents.
State and local government already play a large role in the life of children’s through education. They fail miserably as surrogates. Government, in many areas, cannot get 50% of their schools to graduate. Why would we ever expand their responsibilities when they do such a terrible job with their current workload?
In the end the ISSUE of obesity will solve itself. People will either eat less, their bodies will adapt to what they are eating or they will die. If individual private organizations want to spend their time running PR campaigns and heaping scorn on people who eat too much, great have at it. This is not, however, the domain of the government and it is NOT by any means an epidemic. Trust me, at the rate this economy is tanking and the rest of the world keeps gearing up for a battle, liberals will go back to worrying about the population starving soon enough. Then we can look back upon this moment when people were fat and miserable longingly, just like many in D.C. are no doubt currently looking at the multiple feet of snow and wishing for a little Global Warming.
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