As IF Times

link Soda Wars: Michelle Obama tells kids to drink water | WashingtonExaminer.com.

I suppose it’s a noble thing to use your position of influence to persuade others to do good things.  Issues  and conditions that affect many people but which require financial support to ameliorate are worthwhile causes.  Jerry Lewis has been associated with the Muscular Dystrophy cause for decades and of course Pamela Anderson has been linked to PETA.  World hunger, AIDS, etc etc etc all have their champions.  When Nancy Reagan was the First Lady, she took it upon herself to fight drug use via the famous “Just Say No” campaign.

It gets increasingly harder to find worthwhile causes that haven’t been associated with celebrities.  Michelle Obama finds herself in this pickle and so initially decided to wage a war on fat, especially among kids.  The first pass was to introduce, actually mandate the creation of legumes and veggies onto school lunch menus.  Yum!  Oddly, children weren’t particularly fond of arugula and carrot sticks…go figure.

As this campaign is as successful as the humus dip at a Denny’s, a logical idea then was to make success easier to achieve.  How about the idea of drinking…water!  It would be much easier to point to statistics that will eventually show that the program was working, kids are drinking water! We do have some reservations about getting  kids to buy into this though.  Smart Alecs will say “Water? that’s the stuff they flush toilets with!”.  No doubt there will be expensive public service campaigns expounding the virtues of drinking water with accompanying instructions on how to do it properly.  Let’s see, right hand on tap, turn clockwise…do not overfill!  Pamphlets will be distributed in schools and billboards created to ensure maximum exposure.  Facebook pages will be created on which you can “like” water.  As an accompaniment, there will also be supplementary instructions on other confusing things that children may need help with.

Breathing for example: techniques for proper air ingestion.  Let’s not forget walking instructions.  There will be discussions on the necessity of alternating feet.

I hereby wish to contribute my suggestion for how to tackle the devastating issues of child obesity and water consumption simultaneously.

Let’s remove all water faucets from homes.  Let’s direct water only to large cisterns that regionally serve communities.  To get water, children must walk some arbitrary distance, let’s say 2 miles, to carry buckets of water back to the home for consumption.   In many African countries, they are way ahead of us on this.  We combine exercise with utility, sheer genius.  Have you ever seen a fat African kid? Sometimes the old ways are the best.

Next: breathing in and out. And walking tips, is it necessary to alternate feet?

link A stunning turn that could silence Syria war drums – CNN.com.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye is the old saying.

Now that the issue of how to deal with Syria has pushed all other domestic issues to the background, the competence of the President is under genuine critical  scrutiny.  Even erstwhile loyal supporters and apologists are figuratively taking a few steps back from their unwavering support.  When you have the clinical nutbar Alan Grayson openly questioning the policies of his party leader, we know that the façade of solidarity is crumbling.

Barack Obama has come under as much critical scrutiny as he ever has since appearing suddenly on the national stage.  The partisan knives are growing in their number and even stalwart party soldiers are waffling.  But is this fair?

I think not.  I think Barack Obama has been unfairly treated.  The fact is, the President did not suddenly become incompetent.  Anyone who paid attention will know that he brought that “skill set” to the job from the very beginning.   What has finally changed is that the portrayal and obfuscation of this exaggerated skill set by the media fan boys has now turned.  In the past, we’ve made reference to the Chauncy Gardner character from the 1979 satirical film “Being There” and what we observe now is an apt parallel as life tragically imitates art.

Barack Obama was the perfect foil for championing the sundry issues of the political left, from income disparity, racial disharmony, religious tolerance, social change,  immigration reform, global warming etc etc etc.  All of these issues had one common feature;  they segregated the populace into us versus them.  With the emergence of the Syria crisis, one largely of Obama’s own making, it’s clear that America’s interests as a nation are being challenged and the other side is not going to be guilted or lobbied into submission.

Syria lays clear what has been apparent to many from the beginning.  The administration’s policies lack depth of thought or planning.  What’s worse, it’s more and more obvious that the administration has no depth.  It’s bad enough that the first string guy is going up against players like Russian leader Putin, Chinese leader Li Keqiang as well as all manner of assorted Mullahs and despots but imagine if Joe Biden had to step in as relief.  As it is, John Kerry is getting the policy beat-down from Putin in the international ring  while Susan “Pinocchio” Rice is looking for another video to pin the blame for Syria onto.

But again, while all collectively incompetent, they are mostly not to blame.  That falls squarely on the shoulders of the journalism industry, the institution that’s supposed to be charged with looking after the public’s interests.  Instead, over the past 6 years, they have been acting like used car salesmen hiding the blatant imperfections and exaggerating the features of an obviously defective vehicle.  Only now, the warranty has expired.