The Tea Party Jumps the Shark

The Bucks County Courier Times ^ | June 5, 2014 | Mardi Harrison, Community Blogger

[2ndDivisionVet]

Watching the Tea Party consistently object to everything and anything the Obama administration has proposed over these 5 years has certainly been frustrating to those of us who believe that government can play a positive and valuable part in the lives of the citizenry.

In another column I listed just some of the initiatives that could have had our economy singing, our people employed, and our citizens enjoying the equal treatment guaranteed to them under our constitution and our laws. Instead, we have the most ineffective congress in history, universal, unrelenting obstruction, and our people and economy continue to struggle. And the Tea Party insults our intelligence by bemoaning that the Obama administration doesn’t accomplish anything. Crazy-making!

But for me, the Tea Party has absolutely jumped the shark with their latest attacks on Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiative. If there is one universal imperative that everyone should be thrilled to get behind, it’s raising healthier kids. But as I understand the Tea Party argument – “government has no right to tell me what to feed my kids – if I want to feed them poison in the form of fast foods and junk, well, they’re my kids, and that’s my right.” Sarah Palin personified the position a couple of years ago, when she expressed her opposition to the First Lady’s initiative by delivering cupcakes to a local elementary school. About our children, she was metaphorically – and actually -- saying, “let them eat cake!”

This reaction strikes me as infantile. It’s as though the entire Tea Party is throwing itself on the floor and having a tantrum. “No! I WON’T eat my vegetables! I don’t wanna – and you can’t make me!” What kind of a parent chooses not to feed healthy food to his/her child? What kind of a parent is fine with allowing his/her children to become increasingly obese? What kind of parent would deny healthy food to someone else’s kid? Just what is really going on here?

My hope is this -- that a hatred of our President that is so blind and overwhelming that it manifests in a desire to intentionally harm our children will finally rip the blinders from the public’s eyes, and start them thinking about whether other issues that conservatives have opposed were actually objectionable, or were just another in a long line of otherwise worthy positions that were maligned because of who proposed them.

Or is this something more? The real opposition seems to be to new healthy requirements in school lunch programs. Who are the major beneficiaries of those programs? Poor children. For some of those children, their school lunch is the best meal of their day. But conservative hostility to poor people seems to have no bounds, so are they really saying that not only do poor children not have a right to decent, well-funded schools, but they don’t even have a right to healthy food?

Think I’m imagining things? The House of Representatives is currently considering a bill to mandate that white potatoes be included on the list of foods that women can purchase with their WIC dollars. (These are the same folks who rammed through an “expanded definition of vegetables in school food to include the tomato sauce on pizza). There’s nothing wrong with potatoes – I like potatoes, but studies demonstrate that most women and children already consume plenty of potatoes – what they need is incentive to purchase more fruits and vegetables. This is why the nonpartisan, scientific Institute of Medicine, which advises on WIC standards, has cautioned that white potatoes should not be included in the WIC program.

The current standards are making a difference. In 2010, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which set higher nutritional standards for school lunches, and now, 90% of schools report that they are meeting these standards, and guess what? The rate of childhood obesity is declining for the first time ever. I can see why the Tea Party wouldn’t love that – (not!)

Is it just that lazy parents who enjoy junk food themselves don’t want to have to change their own habits? Could they really be so selfish that they’re willing to trash their kids’ health rather than adopt new healthy habits themselves? I think the real answer is much more insidious. Like so many other political issues, you just have to follow the money. There are huge food companies that make a lot of money feeding junk to our kids. It’s a very lucrative income stream that they don’t want to give up. There’s gold in them thar burgers! So, they frame the issue as an infringement on personal freedom, mention that the Obama’s are in favor of healthy food, and a million Tea Party members reflexively hyperventilate and attack the First Lady.

Shouldn’t this be the issue that demonstrates to rational people in this country just how irrational the Tea Party is when they put their ideology of anti-Obamism and obstruction before everything – including their own healthier kids? Won’t this finally be the bridge too far? If not this issue – is there ANY Tea Party position that the citizens of America will decide is too absurd for them to accept?

[L,TOWM]

Just what Frederic Bastiat stated so long ago -- it remains true even in our "enlightened age".

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

[GeronL]

Yes she is, I still want to find those economic ideas she says would have saved the economy if it weren’t for those meddling TEA Party kids....

[Billthedrill]

It is a fundamental truth in debate that if you cannot express your opponents' arguments in terms with which they would agree, you do not understand the issue. This individual is a perfect example. I doubt that she actually knows any "Tea Party" members, by which one must understand members in a largely mythical projection to begin with. Clearly, however, she is a big believer in governments doing things for people, ignoring the case that governments actually do things to people and that sometimes even those things approved of by the experts of the moment are not only destructive but cannot be recovered from. If she does not appreciate this, and I get the sense that she does not, then she cannot possibly understand that political viewpoint she categorizes as "Tea Party".

This is not to be dismissed as a child's tantrum as she does. It is not to be marginalized as an incoherent expression of frustration at a world we do not understand. We understand it all too well.

[GeronL]

bump

[TADSLOS]

She needs a cheese burger and a double order of fries. That’ll settle her down. It works for the wookie.

[L,TOWM]

Ohh, c’mon — the nation’s police forces are doing a fine job in removing dogs from the public streets, the backyards of homes, driveways, public parks, and any other location the police might happen to be in proximity to a barking or growling dog, whether leashed or not...

[2ndDivisionVet]

Mardi Harrison, esquire, 66 years old (photo from 2011 when she was 63)

[bray]

And they are poo poo heads and I hate them!

Pray America wakes up

[Smokin' Joe]

There’s nothing wrong with potatoes – I like potatoes, but studies demonstrate that most women and children already consume plenty of potatoes – what they need is incentive to purchase more fruits and vegetables.

Excuse me, but I thought Potatoes fell into the "fruits and vegetables" category.

This is why the nonpartisan, scientific Institute of Medicine, which advises on WIC standards, has cautioned that white potatoes should not be included in the WIC program.

Even the "scientific" Institute of Medicine should know the above.

Let's put it this way. Every year, medical "misfortune" kills over 100,000 people in a country believed to have one of the best systems of medical care in the world.

How many children have died of 'Big Mac poisoning", have been 'supersized' to death, ate too many cupcakes and succumbed? Even the annual candy orgies of Halloween and Easter fail to flood emergency rooms with critical care patients OD'd on sugary orange pumpkins or jelly beans and chocolate bunnies.

It turns out that people, given choices, will eat what they crave. For some, that will be sugar, for others red meat, for others yet a variety of vegetables, and for many, some combination, often balanced by what tastes good.

Just as not two people are exactly alike, their nutritional requirements will vary, from month to month, even day to day, depending on a number of factors from age, activity level, climate, genetics, and pregnancy, to name a few.

The idea that someone, somewhere else, who knows neither me nor my life, can somehow concoct a set regime of nutritional requirements which will keep me healthy in all circumstances, with no knowledge of the individual requirements of my physiology is patently insane.

The idea of such a regimen being imposed by fiat or law is repugnant at best, and deserving of outright defiance as a matter of principle.

[Grams A]

Turned on the local news tonight for just a few minutes. After one minute it was time for a commercial break - 7 commercials as a matter of fact. Four of them centered around exercise and what to eat - including a plate of vegetables. It’s just non-stop on all the cooking programs, everywhere. This is getting worse than the non-stop campaign commercials we were getting two weeks ago.

Couldn’t even stand to leave it on long enough to catch the weather. Enough already!

[reasonisfaith]

As always, confusion rules the left.

What’s good to eat is one question.

Who can tell you what to eat is an entirely different question.

Learn the difference and try to keep more alert, Mardi.

[RginTN]

Lefties hate that Obama critics looked at the menu of Sidwell Friends and then questioned Michelle O’s healthy meal menu for everyone in public school.

This op-ed is par for the course in idiot Lefty rhetoric.

[Gaffer]

She’s a simplistic moron

[okie01]

Somehow, I don’t think she was referring to local government performing animal control...

[Paulie]

**But for me, the Tea Party has absolutely jumped the shark...**

Let me clue you into something, Mardi. No one cares what you think.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Obama Girls Enjoy ‘Best School Lunch in America;’ Public Schoolers Lament ‘Let’s Move’ Meals
http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/barbara-boland/obama-girls-enjoy-best-school-lunch-america-public-schoolers-lament-lets

[1010RD]

There’s always something standing between socialists and utopia. In Illinois a century of Democratic control has failed to give us a land of milk and honey. Who is to blame?

People who refuse to pay more in taxes, rich people, productive people, Washington DC, other states with lower taxes and lower regulations, etc.

[Smokin' Joe]

Michelle is pushing all of this whole grain stuff which will only make us fatter.

Grain was for fattening the livestock (who had the teeth for it), so they were more tender for humans to eat (who really didn't have the grinders for a continual diet of whole grain).

Of course, it dawns on me that only potatoes of color qualify for WIC, just not the white ones.

Hmmmmm.

[KarlInOhio]

In another column I listed just some of the initiatives that could have had our economy singing

I think we've heard that song before:

United forever in friendship and labour,
Our mighty republics will ever endure.
The Great Soviet Union will live through the ages.
The dream of a people their fortress secure.

Or maybe some medieval dirges or something foreboding like Carmina Burana.

[bigmak007]

She has an Obama dildo, she won at her kid’s HS raffle.