LaPiqure

In an experiment on pre-schoolers (what a good way to start a blog post), U.S. researchers found out that they liked the same food when it was wrapped in McDonald’s wrappers vs. plain wrapping.

The study shows a couple of things, one being that McDonald’s branding does a spectacular job of linking their product with deliciousness in young American minds.

One thing the study does NOT say, and that I have to point out, is that there’s another force at work here:  McDonald’s is bleeping delicious!

These researchers have to make politically correct findings in order to further secure funding for their hare-brained, obvious projects, so they say things like this:

[A doctor] said the study supports efforts to ban or regulate advertising or marketing of high-calorie, low-nutrient foods and beverages directed to young children.

Doctor, you’re ignoring the fact:  McDonald’s is delicious!

The majority of their marketing and reputation and brand is based on foods that are high in calories and fat and low in nutritional value,” he said.

Translation:  delicious!

Listen, you want to know why the kids thought the McDonald’s food tasted better, even though it was only the wrapping?  Because kids have eaten McDonald’s before.  And when they did, their brains said “Hmm…I’ve noticed that everything from McDonald’s is delicious.  There must be a pattern here.  I will now associate golden arches with deliciousness!”

If you want to blame obesity on something, blame it on the sweet, nourishing taste of readily-available fatty foods, the comfort of not exercising, combined with horseless carriages that let us transport ourselves without burning calories from all that high cholesterol diet and an endless field of post-industrial age jobs that have us sitting way longer than our bodies were meant to. Not some child-focused ads from one company that don’t even exist anymore.  Honestly, how did they let this retard get a medical degree?

The Anti-Obesity movement focuses on the Evil Corporation before looking for more difficult internal factors, which always spells trouble for real improvement.  Doctors blame advertising and branding; McDonald’s is the absolute poster child for burger restaraunts presenting a healthier menu.

It’s almost taboo in our society to acknowledge that fatty foods just taste way better.  America’s too wussy to deal with the great options at our disposal.  If this were ancient Rome, the other greatest civilization of all time, we’d have drive-through McVomitoriums so we could keep eating the delicious greasy goodness of Wendy’s square beef.  And we’d also walk there.

Honestly, this whole anti-obesity thing baffles me.  Kids eat five packs of snacky s’mores and sit around playing video games.  Do we really have to keep searching for obesity solutions?

These doctors with fancy degrees are hardly better than late-night “you can cure your own diabetes!” TV pitchmen.  They tell people what they want to hear, which is that the problem is anyone’s but ours.

They set civilization back one year with each retarded study they publish that blames advertising, instead of giving us real, valuable resources that could help us make educated lifestyle decisions.  Nothing will make a generation of fat kids more angry than growing up, learning what actually made them fat, and finding out they could have learned about it a decade earlier.

They’re like D.A.R.E. advisers who completely demonize a drug like marijuana and give teenagers a perfect outlet to rebel with.  When an idiot kid tries it and doesn’t break into seizures and spit blood, everything D.A.R.E. told them gets debunked.  Even I know this, and this is coming from someone who’s never smoked anything except Red, White, and Blue.

Something bad happens when you abandon your common sense in favor of overcomplication and blame games:  you ruin a perfectly delicious thing like McDonald’s.  With every advertisement for a non-fat McYogurt, a little part of me dies inside. 

If I told you to close your eyes and imagine the biggest issue for this year’s election, what would you imagine? Probably Iraq, right? How about domestically?

If you said “Illegal immigration,” you’re wronger than abortion. Every politician - from the socialists to the mainstream Republicans - have some sort of plan for health care and expanded coverage.

Using the Oscar Wilde Rule, there must be something wrong with this picture. So agrees John Stossel of ABC:

Candidates for president have plans to get more people health insurance. Some would compel us to buy it; others would use the tax code to encourage that. Regardless, insurance is the magic that will solve our health-care problems.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not those without health insurance who are the problem, but rather those with it. They make medical care more expensive for everyone.

He goes on, saying that if more people paid for their own health care, they’d actually generate a healthier health care system. Whole Foods does that with their employees, only paying for catastrophic bills, and their costs went way down, even as employees were collecting thousands of dollars in their HSA (health savings accounts).

Beautiful, no? Of course, this notion is not popular, and is therefore correct.

HSA critics ask whether individual accounts will encourage people to save money at the expense of their health.

Mackey has the right response. “The premise in those kinds of questions is that people are stupid. They’re not smart enough to make these decisions for themselves. It’s sort of an elitist attitude. The individual is the best judge of what’s right for the individual.”

It’s classic government vs. individual argument, and you know which side I take.

The fact is, health insurance is only expected because it’s expected - thanks to policies put in place in the FDR era.  People who argue that health care is too important to leave to the individual don’t realize that we also let individuals have children, get bank loans, buy cars, and make huge life decisions without government assistance.

The appeasement of our Republican candidates to moderate/left-win “health insurance” baloney is another reason I don’t see a true conservative leading the polls.  It’s almost like we’ll be voting in different salsas - they’re all Democrats, but do you want mild or spicy?  Spicy = Hillary and Obama.  Mild = Rudy and Romney.  What if you don’t want any salsa? 

A Democratic Congressman named Brian Baird (from Washington) converted from (or to?) the Dark Side of the Force when he apparently visited Iraq and became convinced the surge is working.  A man who was more anti-War than Hillary Clinton in 2002 (voted against the resolution) recently said this:

As a Democrat who voted against the war from the outset and who has been frankly critical of the administration and the post-invasion strategy, I am convinced by the evidence that the situation has at long last begun to change substantially for the better.

Needless to say, this has dumped sand into the shorts of a few anti-war liberals, notably MoveOn.org, which is supporting a TV campaign against Baird.

What happened to open-mindedness?  Whenever I argue politics with a liberal, that’s all I hear about - be more open-minded.  A liberal converts to the Republicans’ side on one foreign policy issue and suddenly everyone on the left is totally and shamelessly berating him.

Liberals/Dems reading this:  is this really the group you want to ally yourself with?  People so driven up the wall about this stuff that they simply can’t handle any dissenting opinion?

Finding a Common Ground

Okay, let’s set some ground rules for talking about Iraq.  Let’s say Baird and Hillary Clinton and Rush Limbaugh and George Bush are right - the surge is working.  What does that mean?

From a Democrat’s standpoint, I’d probably say that one good surge does not a victory make.  And that’s a valid argument.

From a Republican’s standpoint, I’d probably say that the surge is evidence that military progress is being made, and that indicates political progress could follow in suit.

The problem with these two arguments is, if you’re either with the Dems or the GOP, you have to make a fundamental assumption about the war.  It’s either helpless and the surge is a temporary reprieve, or it’s totally necessary and victory must be assured despite the costs.

Baird has essentially jumped the ship on both the superficial arguments about the surge and the fundamental assumptions about the war.

I have a rule of thumb, generally, which is usually to look more kindly on the side that is doing the least reacting.  In other words, if the people on one side of an issue make good points and bad points, but either way, still sound completely insane with rage, it’s best to avoid them, and probably their views.

MoveOn.org just looks bitter.  Especially with their top candidate saying the surge is working.  They should lay back, if not open-minded, and make rational arguments.  Because their surge, the campaign against Baird, won’t work.