I know, I know...just leave this one alone Travis. But you all know that I can't do that! It's some kind of mental illness I have. When something absurd is talked about I NEED to write about it.

The Associated Press printed a story today about First Lady Obama's decision to take on child obesity. First, before I go all critical on her, I want to talk about the couple of things that I don't have a problem with.

Major elements of Mrs. Obama's campaign include:

"The Food and Drug Administration working with food manufacturers and retailers to make food labels more "customer-friendly." The nonalcoholic beverage industry said Tuesday it will start putting calorie information on the front of its products."

I have no problem with people being more aware of what they are putting into their bodies. Of course it won't make me think twice about demolishing that wonderful McDouble and that large fry, but some people may, and that's fine. Good for them. I'll think about them while I lick the grease off my fingers.

"Offering $400 million in tax breaks to encourage grocery stores to move into "food deserts," areas with limited supplies of nutritious food, and spending $5 million more to establish and promote farmers' markets. Both steps would require congressional action."

Tax breaks = Good. As long as it is a tax break to ENCOURAGE, not DEMAND grocery stores to move in one direction or another, I'm fine with it. The 5 mil to promote farmers' markets? Well, at first thought I was against, but considering 5 mil isn't anywhere near the trillions that we need to stop spending, I'll bite the bullet on that one.

"Encouraging children to exercise more; an hour a day is recommended."

Encourage away.

"Setting up a Web site, www.letsmove.gov (dead link), with shopping tips, a recipe finder and other resources"

No problemo with that one either!

Now, let's get critical.

"The American Academy of Pediatrics is encouraging doctors to monitor children's body mass index or BMI, which is a calculation of height and weight used to measure body fat."

In one paper or magazine you'll read about children having issues about their weight, in the next you'll read that the American Academy of Pediatrics is going to start encouraging doctors to monitoring kid's weight. Which should we be concerned about again? Should little Susie Bingeandpurge really have her body fat measured? I say leave this part out of it. Fat children have enough of a complex as it is, thank you very much.

"Serving healthier food in schools. Congress is due to rewrite the Child Nutrition Act this year, and the administration is asking lawmakers to spend $10 billion over the next decade to give schools more money to make needed changes. More than 31 million children get meals through the federal school lunch program, and many kids eat up to half their daily calorie total at school."

Here we go again. More cradle to grave crap. More money allocated to public schools to fix the problem (which never seems to fix it, so therefore more money gets thrown at it). As I recall from my own hot lunches in school, it was a pretty healthy lunch anyways (except for pizza on Friday! God forbid!!) Not only that, reread the above paragraph. Did you see the kicker? "[K]ids eat up to half their daily calorie total at school." So, while we have an issue with child obesity from pretty damn balanced public school lunches, we also have an issue where children aren't getting enough food while at home? Then, shouldn't we, in theory, make the lunch foods have MORE calories and MORE fat since the kids aren't eating as much at home?

Maybe I'm out of line here, but I think the whole idea is ludicrous. In one speech you can hear a politician piss and moan about needing more food stamp services because people are starving (which is crap, because a good portion of those people just sell the stamps for cash anyways) and then we hear about "needed changes" regarding childhood obesity.

Here's a thinker. Don't worry if my kid is fat! If he's fat then that means he has enough to eat at home then doesn't it? Why is that liberals (and to be fair a good many conservatives) feel the need to worry about stuff like this? I know the other side of the argument: if we can thin down these kids we won't have to pay for their health care in the future. Well, I have a solution for that too! Don't pay for their health care!

I don't mean to rant and rave about such a mundane topic here, but good Lord, there's only so much stupidity a man can take. Now excuse me. I believe my 4 meat pizza is almost finished cooking.