Posted on 02/20/2010 11:16:13 AM PST by Steelfish
First Lady to Governors: Address Child Obesity
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS February 20, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) -- First lady Michelle Obama appealed to governors on Saturday for help in reducing child obesity and said they had a moral and financial imperative to act.
She praised states for their steps already and assured state leaders that the federal government had no interest in taking over their efforts. ''Let's stop wringing our hands and talking about it and citing statistics,'' she told governors at their winter meeting. ''Let's act. Let's move. Let's give our kids the future they deserve.''
The first lady found a high-powered audience to make the case for her new campaign on obesity. One in three American children is overweight or obese, a condition that raises their risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other illnesses.
Obama sought support from leaders of both parties and made sure to respect the influence of the states.
''The way I see this, there is nothing Democratic or Republican, there is nothing liberal or conservative about wanting our kids to lead active, healthy lives,'' she said. ''There's no place for politics when it comes to fighting childhood obesity. And I know all of you agree.''
The first lady's campaign has four parts: helping parents make better food choices, serving healthier food in school vending machines and lunch lines, making healthy food more available and affordable, and encouraging children to exercise more.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
She needs to start with her own massive badonkadonk.
Another “for the children” speech? What happens if the children turn around and give these nanny-state liberals the middle finger?
My take on the childhood obesity IS sexist, so here goes. Moms go ahead and stay at home with your family and refrain from the processed food. My wife is a stay at home Mom and although her cooking sucks I still help with that part. None of my 7 kids are obese or even close. They eat many good home cooked meals and do not over indulge.
She needs to stay out of our homes and out of our business.
Don’t suppose this means she is going to advocate children take up line dancing to country music?
The First Caboose is on a strange crusade.
Has anyone ever seen what is served for school lunch lately? Not to worry they could reduce the school kitchen to a closet and still produce the amount of food needed in about 7 microwaves. It is not the cafeteria of old where they actually made food, the modern cafeteria runs out of scissors to open the premade processed crap.
Oh yeah, let's talk a bit about you and your husbands financial imperatives first!
Every first lady has a cause . . . this cause is fairly benign. Her cause could have been waaaaaaay more problematic so I applaud her for picking something that is NOT politically charged. Can you imagine how loud we would be yelling if she picked something like “entitled to free college education” or “removing In God We Trust from our currency” or “abortion on demand for all ages.”
It could have been so much worse. This cause is fairly neutral, and almost a yawner.
Good point. The liberals claim that conservatives just want to pry into people's bedroom.
I want Michelle OUT OF MY KITCHEN!!
Surely she could find some less shallow, intrusive and judgmental cause. My personal opinion of her is that she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and is more concerned with her appearance and clothes than any “cause” the WH staff thought up for her.
The same people who think children cannot possibly make their own food choices thinks they are perfectly capable to make decisions about sex from elementary school ages.
bizarro-land
I think you are pretty much right. Also, when Mom (or someone) is home, the kids CAN go outside and play.
But there’s also a genetic factor. I was a stay-at-home mom until this year and we live on a farm. Two of my kids are beanpoles and one looks like the other side of the family. More pumpkin than beanpole. All raised and fed under similar conditions.
‘badonkadonk!!! LOL! That’s a word? Whatever it means ,yeah Aunt Esther’s got one big-ass ‘’badonkadonk alright!
The solution is to let kids go outside and play. Instead apartment managers threaten their parents with eviction if they are outside and society makes them fearful of child molesters. And if they do something wrong, society gives them ten times the punishment than the offense. And people used to have a big back yard to play a game of football/baseball/basketball. Now yards are postage stamp size and, if you do have room, the neighbors call and complain that your kids are making too much noise having fun.
To: Badabing BadablondeWhen children’s weight reaches levels that are causing serious health problems, they should be taken away from their parents. We have no trouble doing this with parents who are slowly starving their children to death, so there shouldn’t be any problem doing it with parents who are slowly stuffing their children to death. Of course, if this was a clear and strictly enforced policy, nearly all parents would see to it that their children never got so fat in the first place. The rest would be completely dysfunctional parents (nearly all on welfare of one sort or another) who shouldn’t be allowed to have custody of their children for a whole laundry list of reasons. The idea of performing drastic and risky surgery on a child to deal with an obesity problem, without first trying the simple measure of removing them from the people who are giving them access to all this excess food, is patently insane. It makes no more sense than performing surgery to install a feeding tube with an automated food pump into a child whose parents have been starving him/her, and sending the artificially remodelled child right back to the parents.
To give due where credit is due, I have to say that Michelle is smarter than her husband. She had guts enough to go on Huckabee's show. That will run tonight. From the clips, it looks like she did a good job. She is way more likable than the one.
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