(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
America is back, baby!
Way to go, America! Your investment in the future has paid off handsomely!
But honestly? This just makes me sad.
75% of young Americans are ineligible to serve their country because they have either failed to graduate high school, engaged in criminal activity, or are physically or mentally unfit.
Add that to our list of other exceptional accomplishments.
The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
“The International Adult Literacy Survey…found that Americans with less than nine years of education ‘score worse than virtually all of the other countries'”
Now, since we’re doing everything for the children, how are we going to tell them that there are no other jobs besides military jobs, or that, if they manage to find another job, they will never retire?
Fox News is most concerned about national security:
National security is threatened by the sharp rise in obesity rates for young people over the last 15 years, the group Mission: Readiness contends. Weight problems are now the leading medical reason that recruits are rejected, the group says, and thus jeopardize the military’s ability to fill its ranks.
In a report released Tuesday, the group says that 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24, are too fat to join the military. The retired officers were on Capitol Hill advocating for passage of a wide-ranging nutrition bill that aims to make the nation’s school lunches healthier.
You can’t fudge those waistline numbers. That is too much pudge to smudge. Too corpulent to corporal. The funny thing is that the school lunch program grew out of the rejection rates during WWII because kids tended to be malnourished from the depression.
This isn’t the first time the military has gotten involved in the debate over school lunches. During World War II, military leaders had the opposite problem, reporting that many recruits were rejected because of stunted growth and inadequate nutrition. After the war, military leaders pushed Congress to establish the national school lunch program so children would grow up healthier.
The program was established in 1946, “as a measure of national security,” according to the original bill language.
Among the luminaries at the press release were Dick Lugar (R- High Fructose Corn Syrup) and Tom Vilsack (D- Monsanto).
The good news is that these kids form the basis for a rag tag group of high schoolers calling themselves the Wolverines who will defend our great nation in the re-make of Red Dawn, 2010. This time, it’s the Pinko Chinks.
I kid you fucking not.
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but not because I want these kids in the military.
I really do blame conservatives for a lot of this decline, but certainly not all of it. Democrats have been shadowing them for decades, and now Dems are in full sunlight, with Republicans shadowing them.
This country is beyond fucked up. Once upon a time, we might have bought our way out of the mess, but many, many bills are coming due.
And now they want to lay off 100 to 300 thousand teachers to pay off Wall Street’s debts?
It’s madness.
If you dump all of the labels and fake belief systems you end up with nature correcting the mistake of too many people on the planet using too many resources. Has it, meaning we changed since “God” said “Thou shalt not kill” 2010 years ago. No but we have better technology by which to make that fall more collosal.
when it gets bad enough we will start to stand up out of desperation……
comfort is our enemy…..
even tho we seek it……
when enough of us have joined me at the bottom and there is no escape from discomfort then people will join hands and give voice to their hearts…..
when that happens the self arising movement of the poor and dsipossed can move the world……
we will exercise the power we are…..
it will not take much longer cuz the slide to the bottom is accelerating……..
the myth of modernity and meritocracy is being shown for what it is…………
a myth……
ready recruits, nor much faith in their analysis of who is and who is not good enough for them.
The military has long been taking felons and white supremacists and other fascist crazies into their ranks while rejecting and ejecting LGBT people.
I am, of course, concerned about the nutrition and educational state of our country’s youth. But not by the military’s analysis and not for their benefit.
As the military thinks that white power freaks, christianoid supremacists and felons are fundamentally undamaged goods for military recruitment relative to GLBT people, they cannot make any analysis on the topic that interests me. I might listen to others, but not the military, on the subject.
I blame the greedy corporations who make and sell non food laced with fat, sugar and salt. Then their is the entertainments corporate media who hawk the wares and anesthetize them into deranged states and torpid stupors. TV actually makes you fatter just watching you burn nothing when you watch.. Sometimes at the store I’m blown away at what obese young and old people are buying, it’s hardly food and I am amazed they are alive at all. I don’t believe that this is an accident or that it’s cultural,it is aimed at the poor and the young. Look at the food they pump in our schools. By deign we are being sedated and pacified. Everybody makes money, big ag, the health care industries, big pharma, the advertisers fast food is big money. Supersized and dumbed down.
Hard to believe from what I see on the street and in the stores.
Food is just another reform that needs to but won’t happen. Imagine whole food instead of processed food, and calorie/nutritional information on every item in every store and restaurant.
The tea partiers are right about too much government in our lives, even if they are confused about who that is. Corporate America is our current government and that is, indeed, what we have too much of in our lives.