My Fat Ass Is Apparently Marked Al-Qaeda

Overlooked in all the talk about writers' strikes and college football madness, some news gets overlooked. No, we're not talking about Musharraf's declaration of martial law or Chavez's strong-arming his parliament into approving insane changes to Venezuela's constitution. Surprisingly, these stories have gotten some attention for once. No, I'm talking about our continued fight in The War On Terror®. Absent from all the joy of blasting away dirty foreigners, is a look into the terror that hides within our Great American Nation. And it's not even dirty foreigners hiding within our nation (Lou "Life With Louie" Dobbs certainly has that covered). No, I am talking about a far more insidious threat to our collective national security.

Your fat ass (and mine too).



We've known for years that there is apparently an obesity epidemic on hand, as our nation has caught FAT disease from handling too many dirty needles in the mid-80's (where were you, Clean Needle Programs, when we needed you most?!) We've even learned recently that obesity is contagious, liable to spread like wildfire (or at least a fire that tastes sticky and sweet, as if it were made of freshly made Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Commence drooling upon picturing said doughnuts in your mind...now). Hell, we even warned you about thinking of associating with this blog, yet you continue to defy logic and common sense and read. But that's only the tip of the iceberg.


That's because our collective fat asses constitutes a national security risk. That's according to former Surgeon General, Dr. Richard Carmona, who notes that it has become an impediment to armed services recruitment. We've become too fat to serve our country, apparently. And that's the only reason why the Army can't reach its recruitment goals, because who doesn't want to fight crazy wars? I mean, that's why I always bought G.I. Joe action figures. All this fatness then trickles down into diminishing our power in protecting our homeland, which essentially makes John Goodman Missouri's own Osama bin Laden.

Of course, we can turn this negative into a positive. We just have to be able to use our fat asses to our advantage. I was recently discussing this possibility with one of the friends-of-the-blog:

Von Bookman: and if we just start using fat people as weapons, this problem is solved
Nic Ouzo: fatbombs!
Nic Ouzo: I'm envisioning...
Nic Ouzo: catapults
Nic Ouzo: or, because we're all into neologisms
Nic Ouzo: fatapults
Von Bookman: excellent

Now, you may have to pardon me for taking this news with only a grain of salt. Let's consider the source for a second--Dr. Carmona is only known for being in essence a spineless political pawn for the Bush Administration, since his testimony to that effect was the only thing we ever heard from the guy. Let's face it, he's no C. Everett Koop (Dartmouth, Class of '37). Who is to say that he isn't continuing in this capacity? What, with youth participation in sports always at record highs, I simply think that this is just a ploy to breed a generation of super-soldiers by constantly worrying them about their physical appearance--well-balanced breakfast programs have given them super strength, while midnight basketball has taught them to function without sleep. And with this psychological trauma of reminding the kids of how fat they are, we can then meld them to kill on-command. It's brilliant.



Believe in your obesity conspiracy, folks. I'm just going to grab another piece of pie.

The Immigration Hobgoblin

Immigration is the great bogeyman of politicians these days. It is responsible for all our social ills, from our crumbling schools to our crowded hospitals to the fact that I now have to dial '1' to receive service in English! Oh the humanity! It's going to be our downfall, because while you were content to just watch '101 Biggest Celebrity Oops!' on your HDTV (or you just had your attention held by that new shiny object with its purty colors), Pedro stole your job and Ahmed bought some fertilizer for his spiffy new bomb. You were asleep at the wheel, while our country was hijacked by foreigners (but not by Foreigner--"Hot Blooded" still is not our national anthem)!



This is an exaggeration of some of the reaction, but not by much. The hyperbole that has flown around this issue has truly been astounding, and demagogues like Lou Dobbs (who amazingly does not understand the basic concepts of international trade), Pat Buchanan, and Jeff Sessions have seized the moment. They prey on a populace that doesn't understand foreign policy and so can't really arrive at any solution to the situation in Iraq and elsewhere, but understand that those darn brown people are moving into their neighborhood! It's unsafe, dammit! So put up that Southern Wall, and keep 'em outta here!

(And forget about the fact about how easy it is to come in through Canada, and that Asians and European communities make up a significant part of the immigrant population. And that the terrorists of 9/11 entered the country through legal processes. These are convenient points to forget.)

And so we have events like what occurred last week, as the Senate debated their plan for comprehensive immigration reform. But the demagogues were able to truly get their message out: it was merely a cover for "amnesty"! I'm not even sure what that means, but I got to tell my Senator that I don't like the sound of that! It's the one sin that Reagan committed in his Presidency! So we had thousands of people jamming the phonelines on Capitol Hill parroting back this claim of "amnesty", coupled with the position that "we need to enforce the laws we already have on the books", without pausing to think what their solution would be.

What was their plan to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants already in this country?



It sure would be hard to deport the whole lot of them. The logistics of such a maneuver are mind-boggling. And that doesn't even take into account the economic fallout. Yes, the influx of cheap labor keeps a lot of these low-skilled jobs at a stagnant wage label, but the consequence is that prices have remained low. For example, if we got rid of all the illegal immigrants working in the fields, not only would we have a whole hell of a lot less food available at our MegaMarkets, it'd be a lot more expensive as well. The other key area where immigrants help the economy is payment for Social Security--as the Boomers age, we'll have to begin payments for their entitlements, and without the input from immigrants we'd have a significant shortfall in that regard.

As for "enforcing those laws already on the books"--care to name a few? This is reminiscent of the claims during the Bush-Kerry campaign that during all his years in the Senate Kerry never crafted significant legislation. But ask just about anyone to name an example of significant legislation, you would draw total blanks beyond perhaps "McCain-Feingold". But if we repeat things enough, they must be true!

And the complaint that we first need to concentrate on security is also faulty. If we don't solve both ends of the problem, we still fail. Besides, we use one part as a carrot for the other side--we give in a bit on security measures, you give in a bit on the illegals already here. It's called compromise. It's what legislators are supposed to do.

And that is why the "path to citizenship" is a good idea. We can't afford to get rid of these workers, at least those that have been productive. But you can't exactly give them a free ride, so you make the process difficult and arduous.



Of course, this is the point in any commentary that one is contractually obligated to mention that ours is a nation of immigrants, though clearly a lot of people that some immigrants are created more equal than others. This is also the point in the commentary where the people that need to be reminded of this point the most tune out. We have had many points in our history where we've had an influx of immigrants, people panic, and shit goes down.

In the end, we end for the better because of it. The immigrants eventually assimilate, learning our language and adopting a lot of our customs, while teaching us traditions of their own and contributing to our culture.

Before I leave, I want to point out the biggest hypocrisy of the whole debate. Americans want to brag all the time about how great their country is, broadcasting to the world how the USA is #1. Yet when people risk their lives to become a part of that awesomeness, we reject them. We're saying, "Sorry you didn't win the lottery when you were born. Deal." We can't have it both ways. We must share the awesomeness.

A Slightly Educated View of Important Stuff: Immigration v. Health Care

We here at WDR not only bring you random absurd observations, but we bring you all kinds of random observations. You see, we are not tied down to just the absurd, though we do love to revel in it. No, sometimes we take things seriously. Well, not C-SPAN serious, but we at least take it a notch-or-two above barroom banter or stoner discourse. And we do that in items like this new series: A Slightly Educated View of Important Stuff.



If you had paid attention at all to the happenings in DC the past week, you'd know that the hot-button issue has been Immigration Reform. Well, at least it was, since the bill was attempting it got shot down in flames, hardcore.

There was another issue that got some press, mainly because some fat guy in a baseball cap made a movie about it. Yup, Michael Moore sparked some talk about our nation's problematic health care system with his new movie Sicko. However, this discussion was limited basically to magazine writers and newspaper columnists who filled op-ed pages, pushing an agenda one way or another (I'm not naming sides here).



My point is this: while immigration has been the number one priority issue, it has unfairly relegated the more important problem of health care to the backburner. But Nic, you say, the Mexicans are invading our country! We are at risk! How can you say that health care is more important? Well, I can point it out with just plain numbers. The number of illegal immigrants in this country is around 12 million, while the number of uninsured Americans is close to 45 million, nearly 4 times as much. And that doesn't even take into the count the tens of millions of others that have had to navigate the nightmare of making do with atrocious coverage. It's a simplistic view, yes, but it should put the problem into perspective.

And perspective is a huge problem with these issue. So over the next two days I'm going to look at these issues in-depth, and while not offering any dramatic solutions (I am only slightly educated), it should serve as a better primer for discussing these contentious issues.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming: juvenile humour.