While I wasn’t old enough to have clear memories of Reagan’s Presidency, I’ve heard the stories and read plenty of articles about how the news was almost daily describing the plight of the homeless in America.  To watch the 6 o’clock news, you’d have thought we were all living in a van, down by the river and that only the elites owned double-wide trailers.  Then, almost as soon as Bill Clinton took office, those stories vanished.  A bubble began to inflate.

I’ve seen with my own two eyes the global warming debacle, and I still get a chuckle every time someone demonstrates how similar in dedication the global warming crowd is to the End-Times crowd amongst the Religious Right by telling us that the Earth is cooling because of global warming and how we’re all going to die in some sort of Biblical upheaval of nature and all humanity.

The media has tried to drum up a catastrophe out of thin air before, often involving a flip of their own stories and propaganda.  With that in mind, I think we’ve found our next “crisis”.

 

We can let the New York Times give us the skinny:

WASHINGTON – Nearly one in five Americans said they lacked the money to buy the food they needed at some point in the last year, according to a survey co-sponsored by the Gallup organization and released Tuesday by an anti-hunger group.

And this isn’t the first story I’ve seen out of them detailing our growing problem with hunger in America.  Back on Jan. 2nd, 2010, they melted our hearts with a story about the rise in the number of people on food stamps in America by treating us with gut wrenching case studies.  Like those of William Trapani:

A strapping man who once made a living throwing fastballs, William Trapani, 53, left his dreams on the minor league mound and his front teeth in prison, where he spent nine years for selling cocaine. Now he sleeps at a rescue mission, repairs bicycles for small change, and counts $200 in food stamps as his only secure support.

“I’ve been out looking for work every day – there’s absolutely nothing,” he said.

 Now, aside from the fact that the New York Times must think of us all as a bunch of drooling retards who would dismiss the idea that the guy having his grill knocked out in a jailhouse scrum, and the federal criminal record that put him in the crowbar hotel in the first place, probably have more to do with this guy’s hardships than the lack of jobs nationwide, we can see from the rest of the bit that the New York Times really feels as though the nation is full of starving people, people living only on the thinnest of margins, eking out a meager existence on the government dole, and that their plight should be realized so that America can raise the amount of “assistance” given to these people.  It’s really quite clear.  The New York Times is pleading for more welfare.

No big shock.

But that they would use hunger, now that’s the shock.  That’s freaking epic.

In the New York Time’s own words:

Advocates for the obese and overweight, a group that now includes two-thirds of the American population, hope that the over-the-counter availability of Alli and the approval of Acomplia will provide new options, and suggest that the drugs might even be used together by patients who want help losing weight.   Jan, 2006

 More than three years later, they were still hyping the obesity epidemic:

“Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they’re getting worse rapidly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., said.

The average American consumes 250 more calories per day than just two decades ago, Dr. Frieden noted, and the rising obesity rate is the single greatest contributor to a national epidemic of diabetes.  July, 2009

And to this very day, they still tell us of the massive levels of obesity that are destroying our entire health care system:

If he can take credit for nothing else, the city’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, can rightfully claim to have launched a national effort to help people live more healthfully. He began with a prominent campaign to curtail smoking, the single leading killer of Americans, by banning it in restaurants and bars, and followed that with a campaign to get heart-damaging trans fats out of packaged and restaurant foods.

Next Mr. Bloomberg attacked rampant obesity (though New York, being a walking city, is leaner than most other metropolitan areas) by promoting a requirement that chain restaurants prominently display the calorie content of all their offerings.  Jan. 25, 2010

So what do they want us to believe?

That the bulk of the US population is rapidly coming to resemble Mojo, or that vast segments of the population are getting ready to keel over from lack of being able to wrap their mitts around a burger?

Why do we need to give out more welfare?  It sounds like the problem that has been destroying our health care system, obesity, is about to get solved without government help!  Happy days, right?  No need to raise taxes!

Seriously though.  I have a really hard time believing that people are going hungry, especially in the numbers the original publication says they are.  I don’t care if they called half a million people, something is goofy here.

For instance:

I live in Congressman Marion Berry’s district.  The report says that 22.4% of the people in this district report “food hardships”, meaning that they have struggled to buy food at any point over the last 12 months.

No way.  I go to Wal-Mart, I don’t see distended bellies.  I don’t see anyone that looks hungry, not like you see when you look at pictures of starving African orphans, that’s for sure.

To be perfectly honest, the fattest people are the ones who usually look the poorest!  I mean, seriously, you know the stereotype!  450 pound woman in a pink moo moo with a pair of slippers that look like she’s walked halfway around the Earth in them, dirty, missing teeth, stinking in the heat with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth as she waddles towards the door?

Naw, I don’t buy it.  One fifth of my district isn’t wasting away, they’re almost to an individual getting bigger, if my public forays mean anything…

Here’s how I think you should interpret the results:

America is getting bigger.  Fat people eat more food.  Food costs money.

Thus, as the price of food rises, more fat people are going to be missing meals, or cutting way back.  But it’s not as disastrous as it may seem.  To someone used to eating four or five McDonald’s burgers in a sitting, but who is now reduced to eating a small salad at home for dinner, why, they probably do think they’re starving!  They probably told the pollster the truth, “I’m f’ing hungry!” 

But if we’re over-weight, and used to being too full, is that a bad thing?

 

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