fat people, guns, and jesus: lazy

Showing posts with label lazy. Show all posts

Is 2011 the year?

The year that we make the distinction between disabled and fat?

Probably not.

This website represented in a picture

I have had several people email me this work of art over the past few months. It seems to represent the craziness that we discuss here in one, simple picture.

If you know who created this, please let me know so I can give proper credit.

Note the simplistic brilliance:

Fast food
God reference (God bless AMERICA reference, because America...as you all know...is his chosen country)
Litter
A morbidly obese person on a scooter
Oil stains from a huge, gas-guzzling SUV (ok, I am assuming)

The only thing missing is cigarette butts, or the morbidly obese person smoking a cigarette himself! I'll let that slide though, because the artist put the central figure in a superhero costume which is thought-provoking.

Well done!

Selfishness and stupidity, rolled into a ball

People never cease to amaze me. This story reinforces the stereotypes that we talk about on this blog. No doubt most of these people were fat, smoking a cigarette, and on their way to the closest McDonald's. With a Jesus fish on the back of their automobile.

_______________________

Opening of U.S. 69 ramp in Overland Park delayed months

Very bad news today for drivers who use U.S. 69 through Overland Park.

If you hoped the northbound ramp to 87th Street would open any time soon, forget it. You’re in for a lengthy wait.

State highway officials say they don’t expect it to open until this spring after several cars plowed through the construction zone and sunk in a concrete quagmire in the early evening hours of Dec. 3.

Workers were getting ready to open the ramp on Dec. 15. Now highway officials say it won’t reopen until spring 2011. The ramp has been closed since last August.

Engineers at the Kansas Department of Transportation have determined that a 1,200-foot section of the ramp on the Overland Park/Lenexa border was damaged when perhaps as many as 10 cars tried to cut through the work zone where concrete was poured.

KDOT said a car and an SUV had driven around the traffic barricades onto the newly poured ramp. The car got stuck at the top of the ramp and the SUV became stuck in the middle of the ramp. KDOT said the case has been referred to Overland Park prosecutors.

Construction crews poured 12 inches of concrete pavement for the ramp on Dec. 3and left the construction site at about 6:30 p.m. KDOT says the construction crews put traffic control devices in place signaling the ramp was closed.

The timing couldn’t be worse for getting the work completed since we’re moving into the heart of winter when weather can impede the work.

The 87th Street ramp is part of an $82 million project to widen U.S. 69 to three lanes in each direction from Interstate 35 to Interstate 435. The project is funded mostly with federal stimulus money.

They're taking away our rights!

San Francisco voted to ban restaurants from handing out toys with meals that fail to meet basic nutritional standards for fat, calories, and sodium (for example, McDonald's can't put a toy in an "unhealthy" happy meal). Last month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appealed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture requesting support for a new initiative that prohibits the use of food stamps for purchasing beverages with added sugar.

And people are going CRAZY in protest.

In case you haven't noticed, childhood obesity is a major problem today. According to the CDC, childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years with children aged 6 to 11 years increasing from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008, and adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increasing from 5.0% to 18.1%. If parents will not take responsibility to feed their children properly, then government should oversee and mandate the process. It is not "taking away rights", it is preventing child abuse. And from a bigger picture perspective, it will hopefully stem the societal burden we are forced to accept in order to care for these people who - most likely - will not be able to contribute as functioning members of society.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think withholding the toy from a happy meal will make a dent in the problem. But as a wise man once said, baby steps in the right direction are better than standing still.

As far as the outrage about mandating that government aid cannot be used to buy unhealthy crap - give me a break. If I am paying taxes to help you (which I gladly do, because I realize that people often try their best but still need help), then you damn sure need to use my money to sustain yourself in a healthy manner and not make yourself LESS likely to "get back on your feet" one day.

It is time to end all this politically correct nonsense. It is not "mean" to point out people that refuse to step up and take personal responsibility for themselves or the care of their children. If their actions did not ultimately affect us as a society, I would understand the argument. But their actions DO ultimately affect us as a society, whether in the form of increased taxes, increased healthcare costs, or simply taking the focus off of real disabilities that need our attention and are not the result of laziness, stupidity, and ignorance.

Sources:
Happy Meal Ban (POLL): Food Police or Protector?
New York attempts to ban use of food stamps for soda
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Childhood Obesity

Child abuse

This photo has been floating around the Internet for a while (I am not sure who to give credit to). It is difficult to decide what to talk about first:

1.) The child in morbidly obese.
2.) The child is too old to be in a stroller - it is robbed of whatever chance it has to burn off a few calories. Then again, it could very well be in the stroller because it cannot muster the energy to walk very far (due, of course, to the substantial weight problem).
3.) The morbidly obese child, in the stroller, is eating ice cream.
4.) The mother is also morbidly obese.

This isn't funny, it is sad. And I can't think of one single reason this child should not be taken from its parents and the parents put in jail for child abuse.

People are pigs. And lazy.

You are going into Target, and there are at least four trash cans in front of the store. What do you do? You put your garbage on the ground outside the car door*.

Why should you be responsible for your mess? The Target employees get paid good money to clean it up.

* I couldn't get the Sonic bag in the photo - it had already blown out of the frame.

Do you ever suspect most of these people are just lazy?

Look, I know some people genuinely need these to get around. But the proliferation of electric scooter riders leads me to believe some of these folks are just lazy. Case in point - the power on this thing died shortly after the photo was taken, and the "rider" gave a frustrated sigh, gathered her bags, and walked off with no apparent difficulty whatsoever.