I-CON INFO EXCHANGE

Bear with me. After hearing this headline on the radio, then reading it on Foxnews.com, I almost started screaming. Then I called Teri and did start screaming. This straddles the field between my political passions and my expertise in the health and fitness world. I can't really introduce this except to say that it's about as believable as the 1984 broadcasts about being at war with Eurasia, no East Asia, no Eurasia. So see my running commentary.

America's Hungry Children Rises 50 Percent in 2007

WASHINGTON — Some 691,000 children went hungry in the U.S. sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downtown, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

As Teri said when I was raving about this over the phone, maybe they are finally on a diet. Five days before this article was published, we had this story: Fat Kids Found to Have Arteries of 45-Year-Olds, which stated that "About a third of American children are overweight and one-fifth are obese." These youngins' certainly weren't "struggling" to do anything but walk. Another possibility is that they take so long to coax into motion that by the time they waddle to the pantry, their blood sugar has tanked, and they report to the pollster on the phone, "I'M STARVING!!!"

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who did not have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

Almost a third of those, 11.9 million adults and children, went hungry at some point. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000. The government says these people suffered a substantial disruption in their food supply at some point and classifies them as having "very low food security." Until the government rewrote its definitions two years ago, this group was described as having "food insecurity with hunger."

Go outside of your house or office right now and look left and right. I bet you will see a place to buy food within walking distance.

Restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, malls, hospitals, business offices, gas stations, dollar stores, coffee houses, strip joints, gyms, airports, airplanes, bus stations, church halls, free cafeterias, soup kitchens, sports stadiums, book stores, bars, pubs, Jewish/Catholic/Protestant/Muslim/GLBT community centers, your house, your neighbor's house, the woods behind your house ALL HAVE FOOD. There is no such thing as "low food security", "food insecurity with hunger", or any other type of made-up classification in the United States.

Someone needs to clue in these supposedly "hungry" people that wherever they go to buy their cigarettes, booze, cell phones, televisions, prescription drugs, and video games also sells food. [Hey, wait a minute, I'm hungry right now! BRB]

But now we come to the real reason the story was published:

The findings should increase pressure to meet President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledge to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015, said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group."

Never has so much propaganda been surmised with such leanness, if I may, in a single sentence. 'Pressure' on whom? We, the Lardasses of the United States? Let's create another government program where fat bureaucrats make sure no child experiences a stomach growl and no social worker ever has to come down from her sugar high.

Now, that above-mentioned article about fat brats with middle-aged arteries ends with this from an NYU heart disease prevention specialist: "If you've seen what's on the menu for most school lunches, these findings are no surprise..The time has come to seriously deal with the issue of childhood obesity and physical inactivity on a governmental and parental level." Remember BO talking about diabetes and obesity in the third presidential debate? I wonder what they'll be serving at boot camp for the "Civilian Defense Force."

So to clarify, we are going to have competing government programs: one to fatten 'em up, one to get their blubber butts on a diet. I think my paycheck just lost 10 pounds.

But there won't be only 2 competitors. There is also the multi-trillion-dollar prescription drug program, sure to be expanded to younger folks as we march towards socialised medicine, paying for what? Diabetes, cholesterol, joint-pain, thyroid and blood pressure pills for "people of girth" as Alan Colmes once called them. I'll reiterate my response to Democrats who talk about old people having to choose between food and medicine: maybe if some of them chose food less often, they wouldn't need so much medicine. A little childhood hunger (i.e. limit to one Coke per day and having to miss dessert) might be just what the doctor ordered, unless that doctor is looking for a government grant, really the only way doctors can make a decent living these days.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn't reach the poorest and hungriest people. "The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most," Weill said.

The number of adults and children with "low food security" — those who avoided substantial food disruptions but still struggled to eat — fell slightly since 2000, from 24.7 million to 24.3 million. The government said these people have several ways of coping — eating less varied diets, obtaining food from emergency kitchens or community food charities, or participating in federal aid programs like food stamps, the school lunch program or the Women, Infants and Children program.
"

Has anyone reading this, ever, ever, ever in your entire lifetime, seen a starving American?

Maybe those of you who live in California have seen starving actresses or models on the red carpet. And that brings up another point, in response to "the people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most": America is the fattest nation on earth and the poorest among us are the fattest. My grandfather used to call it Welfare Fat. The only ones with hollowed cheeks are the ones who are so rich, they have time to worry about things like "body image" and can afford diet supplements like cocaine.