That’s not a very unique term anymore is it?  Admittedly so, I shouldn’t have used the term “battle of the bulge” while discussing the fashionable war on obesity.  It’s a play on words which alludes to a different event.  It’s a cliché that you can see on the news, hear on the radio, or read in the paper.

Its not a term you should expect to read on a site which has been dispatching verbal brilliance to the Internet for well over a few years.

As such, I’m going to coin my own term for this country’s flaccid attempts to deal with the growing obesity concerns this nation faces.

Fattle Battle.

‘Nuff said.

If I were to quantify it, I can personally say that I learn of at least two reports a week where government and/or the high powered muckity-mucks in charge at federal, state, or local levels are using whatever power they have to tell people what they can or cannot eat.

Did you know there’s some sort of movement in Massachusetts to ban bake sales at schools?  Them cupcakes are pretty high calorie stuff.

Don’t forget about the 5 year old kid that had his homemade lunch taken away by some school official in favor of giving him chicken nuggets prepared by the school.

Remember the good ole days when we had First Ladies who took on causes of literacy and drug abuse?

Whether you want to scoff at the following remarks and declare them to be the hyperbolic ramblings of some radical nut on the Internet is completely up to you.

The Fat Police are coming if they’re not already here.

Consider sometime in the near future when the wellness program sponsored by your employer under duress of a pending governmental mandate deems you to be obese.

Most wellness programs currently in place today offer a plethora of resources ranging from biometric screenings, to interactive websites, to poorly timed phone calls from “Health Coaches”, to financial incentives in order to encourage their employees to eat right, exercise right, and generally maintain optimum wellness.

I see a future where that won’t be the case.  Wellness will not be encouraged as much as it’s compelled.

The government will compel employers to provide (not offer) wellness plans to it’s employees much in the same way they are to provide health care to the same employees.  U.S. taxpayers will have to prove they participate in a wellness program to the IRS or pay a fine.  The implied cost and bureaucracy  behind it all will replace and subsequently exceed the current fiscal impacts of the obese on the U.S. economy.

Obesity will be likened to financial difficulties like bankruptcy.

Picture a day in the near future when the extra poundage has gotten out of control.  Diet and exercise as prescribed by your government approved and assigned physician has failed.  Now the subject of the that extra 50 pounds accumulated over the last decade becomes the focus of attention at the DOF.

That’s right, people.  The Department of Fat will be charged with regulating personal weight so as to help manage costs for this country’s socialized medicine program.

When your company mandated wellness program tips off the DOF that you’re of the belief that food tastes good, you’re generally screwed.  You’ll have to go downtown to the courthouse in order to file for chapter 7 obesity.  You can do so with the assistance of a court certified health coach or in pro se.

Within a few weeks of filing, you’ll have to file all sorts of forms, and schedules (don’t forget the means testing) which pretty much outlines the contents of your fridge, pantry, and assorted cupboards and cabinets.  Don’t forget the extra fridge out in the garage.

Your calorie intake will be placed into receivership as the court mandates, dictates, and generally governs what goes into your pie hole.  The initial hearing will be grueling as the trustee asks you the most personal of questions about your diet.  Even worse about the hearing is that you won’t be allowed to wear loose fitting dark solids either to the hearing or while your caloric intake in under the control of the court.  Instead, you’ll have to wear bright spandex day in and day out.

It’s just a matter of time, people.  The Bill of Rights has been reduced to seven amendments in a matter of just three years.  The powers that be all over this great nation of ours are passing ordinances and laws which will keep the likes of McDonalds from adding toys to fattening Happy Meals in California, to the city of New York banning trans fats, and all of the stupid stories in between which continue to prove that the government knows what’s better for us all.

Of course you don’t have to believe me at this point.

When it actually does happen though, I’ll be here.

According to unnamed sources close to the administration, the idea could be introduced in the President’s next State of the Union Address.

The move for the Administration to consider such a measure comes from the optimism the White House holds for a pending Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the President’s signature health care legislation.  Mr. Obama himself has said before that he feels the Supreme Court will rule in his favor and uphold the individual mandate in the so-called “Obamacare” to be legal.

Under the premise that the government is granted the authority to compel an individual to enter into a contract with a health insurance company and subsequently participate in a market, it would then be granted similar authority to compel Americans to participate in social networking.

The basic framework of the plan strives to consolidate the resources of the internet into One Simple Sign-on, or OSS.  Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have expanded their presence on thousands of websites in recent years with buttons labeled “Sign in with Facebook” or “Sign in with Twitter”.  For web users who use a variety of websites for activities such as shopping, chatting, and entertainment, the ability to sign into multiple websites using just one sign on simplifies the process.  Users don’t have to set up separate accounts for separate websites when it’s all tied to their social networking sign-on.

The OSS initiative would take the practice to the next level by attaching American’s social networking id to websites operated by the IRS, Department of Labor, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Commerce, and a host of other governmental agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

Under the OSS initiative, patients entire medical histories could be accessed through a Department of Health & Human Services by logging in with a Facebook sign-on.  Ideally, the information would be restricted to the doctor or medical professional who is authorized through a medical history application within the social networking website.  Patients could even list their status as an organ donor on their chosen site.

The proposed plan wouldn’t be limited to just governmental services though.

The OSS initiative could also be used by educational institutions to post academic performance information such test grades and transcripts directly onto a student’s profile.

Banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions could utilize the OSS tool to expand their services, and complete credit reporting.

The President’s One Simple Sign-on initiative comes with what could potentially be a hefty price tag.

Today, social networking sites don’t fall into the jurisdiction of the government where they can be told what features should or should not be available to it’s users.  Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus put extensive measures in place to make their sites safe and secure to use.  With OSS and all of the potential benefits it promises,  websites would have to take additional steps to not only increase security, but also to design, build, and launch additional applications to handle the integrated features which are being proposed.  Such efforts could lead to the near extinction to free social networking sites.

Making sites like Facebook a pay site wouldn’t be the only drawback though.  Aside from the risk of increased phishing and hacking, response times would be expected to decline.  Accounts which can be instantly set up today would take approximately six weeks to obtain full functionality under OSS as a result of the implied regulations.  The Federal Communication Commission would carry primary oversight of OSS, however given the widespread reach of the initiative into every corner of American’s lives, the lines of responsibility could easily resemble a plate of spaghetti noodles.

All of the details and costs of OSS won’t be available until it can make it’s way through Congress and eventually onto the President’s desk for signature.  Even then, the measure would have to be at least revenue neutral for the President to even consider signing it.

Once the President’s back burner idea was made public today, the blogosphere and social networking sites alike were filled with dispatches from proponents and opponents of the measure.

Those in favor of the plan displayed a sense of elation over the fact that their on-line activity could be consolidated  by OSS.  On the other side of the measure, opponents of the measure voiced the same objections to OSS that they’ve voiced for Obamacare.

On Twitter, a poster using the handle @MonkeyRump52 tweeted “Where do those egg headed, pencil pushing, bean counters in the government get off with tellin’ me I HAVE to set up a facebook or twitter a”  The poster’s tweet was cut off when it exceeded the 142 character limit imposed by Twitter.

A Facebook user suggested that the implied regulations behind OSS could result in the creation of “Status Update Panels” which would govern the content of what people post on their profiles.

Several posters on myspace displayed a failure to understand the nature of a mandate.

Users on all reported sites expressed a genuine concern that an inevitable governmental takeover of approximately a sixth of the internet could be devastating to the quality of social networking in general.  As one Facebook poster put it:  “Public housing, public assistance, public schools, public restrooms, public internet.  ‘Nuff said.”

Provided OSS could be passed and integrated into American society, it could be very difficult for opponents of the measure to strike it down.  Taking the matter to the Supreme Court would be considered moot in the event the individual mandate of Obamacare is determined to be constitutional.  It would take  a President and a Congress willing to repeal the law in order to discontinue the initiative.

In the meantime, One Simple Sign-on is just an idea in the mind of a man who hopes to be re-elected this fall.  If we wins, OSS will join Obamacare as signature pieces of legislation which either have or will polarized a nation.

As far as I can tell, only one of the original eight candidates for the GOP nomination tried to do anything about it.  Rick Perry put it on the special session agenda last year in the Texas legislature.  At that point, the state was threatened by US Attorneys to cool it or the administration would cut Texas off from the rest of the flying nation.  Texas blinked and killed the bill which would make the pat-downs illegal.

I’d like to think there are a few candidates out there who took a strong stand against the pat-downs.  I just don’t remember any of them making an impression with me during the debates which took place late last year and early this year.  Looking at the website for the front runner, I don’t see anything there which gives me a warm fuzzy that he’ll do away with them either.

Now, it gets just a little more personal though.

Junior is going off to college in a few months.  Given that his grill is still attached to an elaborate system of pulleys and cables, it’s going to be necessary to fly him into town every six weeks or so to go see the orthodontist.

In discussing the matter with him this afternoon, I didn’t really pull any punches.

“You know when you’re flying in and out of town while you’re off at school, you’re going to be subjected to the TSA either taking pictures of your junk, and feeling it up.  Just understand that every time they do that, your 4th Amendment rights are being violated. ”

Beyond that, I didn’t give him any advice on how to handle the encounter.  I didn’t tell him to be polite and put up with it, and I didn’t tell him to resist.  I know what I would do, and I’ll let him make up his own mind on how to react.

Big picture, I find us to be in a pretty sad state of affairs when I’m still writing about the damn things a year and a half after they were instituted, and that there appears to be no end in sight for the pat-downs regardless of who wins the election.

If we aren’t generally screwed right now, what exactly will be the key indicator where we can say we actually are?

That’s right.  Faith and Hope could give a rat’s ass about each other, and they have no problem with calling each other names, emitting guttural growls, and even scrapping it up given the opportunity.

Although we have plenty of safeguards in place to keep the two from fighting, every once in awhile, the firewall becomes a little porous.  It’s during those times that we have to intervene to stop the fight.

Consider the alternative.

Hope is a pit bull and could very well have it in her to fight to the death.  She’s done enough damage to Faith on two different occasions where we had to have Faith’s wounds sutured.

Damages and injuries to each other aren’t the only consequences to letting the two of them fight it out.  There’s occasional property damage, but more importantly, those of us here in the organization have taken on an injury or two in breaking up a fight.  Last summer, I was bitten on the hand at the base of my thumb.  It was just a few months ago that full feeling returned to my thumb.    Given that the fights do get ugly, both dogs wear harnesses which make it easier to break them up in case the brawl ensues.

Big picture, it’s generally inhumane to let the dogs fight without doing anything about it.

In pondering the whole idea of why we intervene in those battles, the idea of the Ron Paul foreign policy as I understand it comes to mind.  To be honest, I initially characterized the Congressman’s stand on foreign policy to one of isolationism.  As I listened to him in a debate or two, and subsequently endured a troubling internet encounter with a caustic minion of Ron Paul, I’ve altered my point of view to consider Ron Paul to be more of a non-interventionist instead of an isolationist.

As it is right now, I’ve encountered just a handful of Ron Paul minions on line out here on the internet.  Understand that any characterizations I’m to make of Ron Paul fans are based purely on the handful of people I’ve encountered, and they’re all my own opinion.

Ron Paul generally has a good message on adhering to the original intent in the Constitution.  I believe he could be a good Treasury Secretary or some other role in guiding monetary policy.  His stand on staying out of the fights of others concerns me though.

As much as we would like to ignore conflicts in some far off land and write them off as “not in my own backyard”, the threat of those events spilling over into our own country is too great a concern.

At this point, I could circle back to why I told you about  my fighting dogs.  It should be pretty obvious what the point is that I’m about to make, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Vote Responsibly Y’all.

Even though you haven’t asked me, I’m pretty sure I’ve made it abundantly clear around here that I find the premise of man made global warming and/or climate change to be a pure fallacy.

Let’s take it further though.

The premise of man made climate change has political and theological motivations.  The problem is that the data behind the science in favor of the premise has been debunked.  Since we can set the science aside as unproven, the only conclusion one can come to is that the purveyors of the climate change hoax are motivated by the political power involved or their pantheistic machinations .

Two or three words behind man made climate change people.  Political ideology and theology.

Now the background has been painted.  Let’s move on.

Unless you work in very specific fields, it’s generally a bad idea to discuss politics and theology in the office.

Agreed?

Imagine my surprise, ladies and gentlemen when a spam email was sent out to the inmates of cubeville the other day advertising the planned festivities around Earth Day for this year.

Just on a side note, what’s going on with the scheduled date for Earth Day?  Why does it move around so much?  I’ve known of a time or two when it landed on April Fools Day.  That seems pretty appropriate if you ask me.  The day is already dedicated to perpetrating acts of Tom Foolery on others.  What better day than to convince us that even though the volatile activities of terra firma (another bitchin’ italicized Latin phrase) can’t do the planet in, we can by driving SUVs and partaking in that which is bovine?

On a second side note, consider the origin of Earth Day.  There are essentially two lines of thought on who was behind dreaming it up.  The “feel good” origin attributes it to Senator Gaylord Nelson.  The other origin harkens back to some guy who eventually composted his girlfriend in the closet of his apartment.

Okay, so let’s return to the origin of my rant.

Office SPAM!

The spam email in question went on to talk about how partaking in a low carbon diet can help to save the planet.  Eating food that’s produced locally will require less gasoline to get it from the fields and into your pie hole.  Blasted those fossil fuels!

It goes on to talk about finishing everything on your plate and not wasting food.  It also advises us to “mooooooove away from meat and cheese”.  Ironically enough, the spam came out on the day they featured the nacho bar as one of the lunch specials.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

I have no problem with eating locally grown vittles in the name of supporting the local economy and saving on operational costs while at the same time more efficiently utilizing our resources.

I generally try to limit my red meat and cheese intake as a matter of dietary integrity.

Don’t give me that shit that the reason I’m doing it is to save the planet.

Even more importantly, where does an agent of my employer get off on preaching their politics and theology to me?  What if I were hit ‘Reply to all’ on the cafeteria spam and hit them with an even toned common sense response which basically tells them that political and theological discussion at work either out loud or over email is generally frowned upon since the subject matter can be polarizing to say the least?

I can assure you a woodshed would be involved.

With that, my friends, I’m not going to wish you a happy Earth Day, or encourage you to do what you can to return to an agrarian lifestyle.

Nope.

Instead, I’m going to drive one of my gas guzzlers to work and treat it like any other day without lamenting the farce that my presence on God’s green Earth is not impactful in the way the global warming crowd would have me believe.

They don’t feel that we worked hard to get here.  Instead, they feel that we were just winners of a multi-state lottery.

It drives them nuts to know the seeds of this great country of ours were planted out of a sense of rugged individualism and a desire for small government.

It drives them nuts to know that our forefathers made a pretty good go of it too.

It drives them nuts to know that the practices and behaviors we abhor today were acceptable practices and behaviors back then.

It drives them nuts that our government was founded in a way to not only limit what they could do, but also specifically told the government what it couldn’t do.

There are plenty of people who cleave to these machinations and hold enough power today to give them the false sense of confidence that they can usurp the Constitution in order to fix things in the name of social justice and righteous indignation.

As a result of this particular belief  system, they absolutely hate the founding fathers.

It’s sad.

Earlier today, Wifey and I took a trip to Bed, Bath, & Beyond in order to enhance the décor of the compound with more visually aesthetic furnishings.  We opted for a style consistent with Slipcover Nuveau.

While shelling out the dough to change the color of our couches, something at the register caught my eye.

No, it wasn’t a magic remote control designed to show me what’s important in life.

Instead, it was a set of Pez dispensers featuring some of our founding fathers.  It would seem the good people at Pez feel they can edumacate it’s customers through the wonders of sugar candy delivered via the implied stomas of some of this nation’s greatest statesmen.

Don’t forget that such an edumacation comes at a price either.  In this case, it’s $12.99 for the set of five.

One’s got to wonder if the great Americans featured on the candy dispensers ever looked some 200 years into the future and made the determination that their mark on this earth would be complete when their visage was relegated to a novelty item.

In the meantime, consider that certain segment of people I discussed earlier.  Deep down, we know they’re boycotting Pez as a result of this ill conceived marketing scheme.

The bit was a throwback to Saturday Night Live when I think it was Father Guido Sarducci discussed this planet.  The gag was that the only difference between us and them was that they held their corn on the cob vertically instead of horizontally when they ate it.

As we sink further and further into the muck and mire of our cultural decline as chaperoned by failed political ideologies and expanding senses of entitlement, I’m becoming more and more convinced the alternate Earth exists.

Chalk this one up as political, my dear reader.  There will be no righteous indignation over the abuse of guacamole spouted here today.

Instead, the righteous indignation comes from more than just holding a cob of corn at a 90 degree angle.

It comes from the fact that there are a whole lot of suffraging idiots who believe that all Americans are charged with sending their vast sums of ill gotten gains to a big pile of cash stored in the basement of the White House for the express purpose of it’s primary occupant to occasionally step out of his perpetual state of presenteeism to pass the money out to those who won’t work for it.

It comes from the premise that the American people feel compelled to ask the President for his permission or blessing to obtain specific medical care.

It comes from a President who feels compelled to act extra-Constitutionally by using executive orders and executive branch departments to enact his own bidding on the way things should really be, regardless of whether Congress has passed a law on it or not.

It comes from a President who injects himself into high profile civics lessons with a clear and present ignorance of the facts.  When he does have the facts, they’ve been pre-butchered  by the media in order to advance a cause.

It comes out of the knowledge that upon the potential striking down of his signature legislation, he will blast the Supreme Court with a blatant disregard for separation of powers and judicial review.  He will ignore a ruling against him and continue to implement the measure using every tool at his disposal to circumvent the rule of law.  If that’s not enough, he will also inspire his sycophantic minions to call for the collective heads of those justices who voted against him by way of impeachment or lynch mob.

It comes from the fact that the President willingly uses the bully pulpit of the office to bold face lie to the American people.

It comes from the continued hypocrisy the man displays on a regular basis.

Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, that the source of my righteous indignation doesn’t lie exclusively with the Executive Branch though.

The mere fact that the Supreme Court could rule against the individual mandate in a 5-4 decision signals a fundamental display that four justices on the court are not doing what their oath mandates that they do.  Yes, I’m righteously indignant about that too.

It also comes from the mouths of bold moderates who choose to lecture us about cannibalizing ourselves and our legislative bodies for demanding more fiscal responsibility of our Congressional candidates.

It comes from those who would call us isolationist Hobbits for not wanting to take on more debt.

It comes from a willingness to compromise the values of the electorate in order to stay in power.

It comes from a separatist party acting outside of the law to intimidate voters and put bounties on the heads of others.

It comes from race baiters who seize on the instance of a tragedy to elevate their own standing.

The list goes on, but what does this have to do with corn and a parallel Earth?

Based on everything which is currently going wrong, there’s an odds on favorite that holding our corn cobs horizontally may not be the best way to go.

Vote Responsibly Y’all.

About a month ago, two individuals each made a bad decision when they encountered each other one night.

One of the individuals was killed in the process.

The incident should not have happened.  The resultant death is senseless.

Let’s see.  I’m sure there are other senseless actions at play here too.

When the President made reference to the decedent as a kid who could have looked like his own had he had a son, that was senseless.

Whenever pathological race baters such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton inject themselves into a  situation like this (or any situation) that’s senseless too.

When the mother of the descendent moves to trademark various slogans which invoke the name of her son, that seems to be senseless.

When a highly placed member of the New Black Panthers places a bounty on the head of the surviving member of the original incident, that’s senseless.

When a celebrity tweets the address of where the survivor of the incident is hiding, that’s senseless.

Its even more senseless when the address turns out to be wrong, and the elderly couple who resides there has to go into hiding.

Those who lectured us last year against using fiery rhetoric in the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting have used the same fiery rhetoric over this matter.  They have not called for any toning down of the talk which is happening right now.

Yeah, that’s senseless too.

A big part of the problem here is that we don’t know the entire story yet of what really happened, short of what I described before.  Naturally, we don’t want silly facts to get in the way of our collective rush to judgement.

Rushing to judgement rocks.  Look at where it got us with the 96 bombing at the summer Olympics in Atlanta.  For that matter, who can think of the Duke Lacrosse team without considering a rape incident?

Whatever happened to Tawana Brawley or Richard Jewel?  What about those kids on the Duke Lacrosse team or their accuser?

Frank Reynolds is probably rolling in his grave.

Reynolds, of course, was the news anchor at ABC who was on air when Reagan was shot in 1981.  When the details weren’t coming to him correctly as he reported the details of the event on air, Reynolds yelled at the staff off camera:  “Let’s get it nailed down…somebody…let’s find out! Let’s get it straight so we can report this thing accurately!”

Can you picture any of today’s anchors demanding such journalistic integrity (an oxymoronic term nowadays) while on air?

I can’t.

One more senseless thing comes to mind.  Here in the middle of March where we are starting to get into the hotter months of spring and summer, the campaign to reelect the President is selling hoodies. Certainly it’s not as crass as the ones they sold a few years ago referring to healthcare as a “BFD”.  Or is it?

The hoodie has become a symbol of what happened in Florida, which for all intents and purposes is characterized as a racially motivated crime.  Doesn’t it seem senseless that the President would use the devices of such an incident to garner some votes?

Please understand here and now that I’m not picking sides in this one yet.  All of the facts are not known yet, and those which are known depict conflicting accounts.

I’d rather wait and get this one nailed down first.

Meanwhile, I sit here on the outskirts of the Texas hill country trying to figure out which one of the four (three really) I should vote for.  It really comes down to two of them in the end.

All of the candidates individually possess one or two features, attributes, or skills which I would look for in a President.  Unfortunately, there’s no consolidation of resources which allows me to feel 100% comfortable with who gets my vote outside of the fact that they’re anybody but Obama.

When it comes down to it, I have more reasons not to vote for Obama than I have to vote for those here on my side.  That makes me nervous.

So the vote will be split in the Republican party between the conservatives and the moderates.  If you don’t know what happens in events like that, look at the 1992 and 2000 elections.  Ross Perot took votes away from George H.W. Bush and Ralph Nadar took them from Al Gore.

What’s a charter member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to do?

Tangential segue.

This x-ray of my pit bull has absolutely nothing to do with the content in this post save for the possibility that the colon may be present.

There’s news today that the CBO did a better job with their math and guesstimated that the cost of Obamacare over ten years was around double the original estimates it made back when that monstrosity was working it’s way through Congress like Aunt Selma’s meatloaf goes through the colon.

For real?

Wow!  We never saw that one coming, now did we?

Given that the measure is more cost prohibitive than the original revenue neutral prize it was touted to be, I think it’s purveyors should roll the damn thing back in the name of all that is honest and right in the world.

*waits*

Pinch me, I think I’m dreaming. Not a good dream, mind you. This is one of those dreams born sleeping on a bad mattress which generates sore bones in the morning.

News is out today that the administration is now looking to block a new law here which requires voters to show photo identification before dangling a chad.

There’s a presumption that about 11% of the Hispanic population here in Texas does not have valid photo ID.

Voter ID has nothing to do with underlying racism or voter intimidation. But you know that don’t you?
Voter ID has everything to do with verifying that any and everyone who participates in the voting process is eligible to vote.

Plain, clear and simple as that.

Instead of halting the law and further leaving instances of voter fraud available to take place, why not start a campaign to notify the electorate to make sure they have proper identification when it comes time to vote?

When it does come time for me to vote, I will be there with my ID and proactively shove it in the face of the election worker to validate my eligibility.

God forbid we apply a little bit of common sense in the matter.