Posted on 12/01/2011 10:08:07 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(CNSNews.com) – Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) says obesity threatens America’s “national security” because many people who join the armed forces cannot pass the required physical tests because they are overweight.
Frist also cited a 2010 study on the problem entitled “Too Fat To Fight."
“Childhood obesity is something much larger than something that just hurts and pulls back and restrains our economic strength. It threatens our security, our national security as a nation,” Frist said on Tuesday at the "Building for a Healthier Future" summit held in Washington, D.C.
“Between 1995 and 2008, over 140,000 potential military recruits failed their entrance physicals, failed them because they were too heavy,” said Frist. “That’s 140,000 young men and women who were motivated enough to enlist but, because of being overweight, could not. They were the ones who wanted to serve their country, who were willing to put themselves in harm’s way, and they were told, ‘No, you’re too heavy to safely be trained.’”
He continued: “We hear the quotations all the time from people who are right on the front line. Retired four star U.S. Army General Johnny Wilson said that childhood obesity, and I quote, ‘has become so serious in this country that military leaders are viewing this epidemic as a potential threat to our national security,’ end quotation.”
Frist then mentioned a report by retired U.S. military leaders that analyzed the effects of obesity on military recruitment. The report called on Congress to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act with several modifications.
The “2010 study was even more direct and it was titled simply, ‘Too Fat To Fight,’” said Frist.
You know what is a bigger threat to our national security? Barack Obama and Joe Biden.Yup. And Frist is a moron not to see that.
If we lowered our tax rates and disposed of so many of these gawd-awful regulations, pretty soon, we’d have plenty of factories that we could convert to wartime production if needed.
Just have them sit on the enemy, thereby suffocating them.
HFCS is partly a government-spawned monster. For well north of 100 years, the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has kept the price of sugar in the US well over the world price. HFCS is obviously relatively cheap, so now it is widely used. Either that, or a product with real sugar is made in Mexico or offshore.
Thanks for the ping!
I have to disagree with you on that one. A lot of it just didn't go on period because perps feared retribution. Kids feared other kids parents or rather they respected other kids parents. We knew if we got in trouble the news of it would likely beat us home.
Here is the telling part though. I grew up close to Knoxville, TN.I lived theres as a kid from 7-10 I could pretty well feel safe even five or six streets over. We moved to a rural area 20 miles away when I was 10. At age 12 I still could go to downtown in the afternoon catching a ride in as my dad was going to work. I'd catch a couple of movies and walk to his place of work about 8:00pm usually dark. That was through downtown even passing a couple of bars. It was reasonably safe. By the time I was 16 it wasn't safe.
People working where my dad did began carrying. Vehicles were getting broken into and/or stolen. Ten years before this was not happening. Remember the old 55 Chevys? You could start it and drive it without the key you could a 61 also IIRC but if necessary you could lock the ignition with the key. Windows were left rolled down, kids left in cars, and nobody messed with it.
In the outlying neighborhoods from downtown house doors once only locked when people went off on vacation were being lock most of the time. Burglaries increased even in the rural areas. So what happened? Several things. One was fathers left mothers to raise kids alone usually in public housing. The kids lacked guidance and discipline. The mothers had to work to raise the kids. Drugs became more prevalent and the nation began a rapid moral decline. Add to that persons who once for the good of society some bordering criminally insane were suddenly put out on the streets instead of being locked up. Thus street people began. Teachings of Dr Spock became popular also. Many things happened and the sum total brought us too a far more dangerous place.
True some things did go on but not too the increased level we see today. Criminals have lost their fear of retribution or punishment. I sure don't for example remember hearing such horrid things as this Special judge grants new trials for torture-slaying defendants, cites Baumgartner's conduct nor do my parents remeber such violence.
The neighborhood in that article where the victims were car jacked and kidnapped once was among the safest. It was a blue collar middle class neighborhood when I was a kid. When I took a job in that neighborhood in the late 1980's it was getting real bad. I was a store clerk and I carried every night. The neighborhood where they were taken to be tortured and killed? That was about 3 miles away from there on the back streets. I would not go there in daytime without carrying.
Our nation is in serious decline and Frist is worried about a kids weight.
Yes. He has a point. The finger should point back at the government. Thanks for turning us into a carb based society. What could go wrong? Metabolic Syndrome. This one sits at McGovern’s feet and the food pyramid. Our government is going to produce more deaths and suffering than all of histories mass murderers combined.
Uh, that’ll be solved in no time when they enter boot camp.
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