Michelle Obama vs The Hopelessly Rotund Republican Caucus

Grotesquely rotund Republicans like James Sensenbrenner (R-WI, 375 lbs) and Rush Limbaugh get hysterical about Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. They take it very personally... although they call it something different. They call it socialism or something absurd like that. Undermining American school children by wanting schools to offer healthy alternatives! Imagine! Now we don't just have a Republican War on Education; we have a Republican War on Healthy School Lunches.

Something tells me right-wing fatties like Sensenbrenner and Limbaugh will be pissed off at CREDO Action's new campaign-- but that the First Lady will be pleased by it.

So-called pink slime is a beef-like product created by grinding together connective tissue and beef scraps normally used in dog food, and treated with ammonia hydroxide to kill salmonella and E. coli.

It is "not meat" according to a 35-year veteran USDA microbiologist, and was recently rejected by the likes of McDonalds, Taco Bell and Burger King.

So it's pretty disturbing that the USDA continues feeding this stuff to kids, and plans to buy seven million pounds of it for school lunches.

Tell the USDA: Stop putting pink slime "Lean Beef Trimmings" in kids' school lunches.

In an all too familiar story, despite concerns raised by USDA inspectors and minimal safety inspections, the USDA approval of Beef Products Incorporated's "Lean Beef Trimmings" was pushed through by USDA undersecretary JoAnne Smith, a George H.W. Bush appointee and former president of the National Cattleman's Association.

The USDA allows beef products like hamburgers to contain up to 15% of the Ammonia-treated, meat-ish stuff, but inadequate labeling requirements prevent parents from knowing if it's included in the meat being served at their kids' school.

Tell the USDA: Don't buy any more pink slime for school lunches.

Aside from the lack of nutritional value, pink slime raises a number of health and safety concerns. The New York Times exposed in 2009 that despite being treated with ammonia, three E. coli contaminations and four dozen salmonella contaminations occurred between 2005 and 2009, during which time school lunch officials three times temporarily banned hamburger makers from using pink slime from one facility in Kansas.

Ammonium hydroxide is itself of course harmful to eat, and can potentially turn into ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in home made explosives.

Kids need nutritious food to be able to learn in school, and many of the tens of millions of kids who rely on school lunches come from low income families where they are less likely to get a healthy diet. While pink slime is a nutritionally inferior and potentially risky product, the school lunch program saves only three cents per pound of ground beef by continuing to put this filler in kids hamburgers.

Over the past few months, numerous fast-food chains have rejected the product and say they no longer use it. School lunch officials should clearly follow suit.

There are a number of excellent and dedicated doctors running for Congress this year and one of the best and brightest is David Gill (IL-13), who's in a tight primary race with some conservative schlemiel. Dr. Gill is very concerned with children's nutrition and with the crap kids are getting in school. "As an E.R. doctor," he told me this morning, "I've cared for children critically ill from the diarrhea caused by E. coli and salmonella. It's an agonizing illness, and the federal officials who permit this type of 'food' to be served to our children should have been dismissed from their positions long ago. This is yet one more glaring example of what happens when we turn our government over to representatives who are funded by Corporate America. I'm proud that in my Congressional campaign, I refuse to accept a single penny from the corporations and Wall Street banks that are rotting our democracy from the inside out." Sound like your kind of candidate? Please help him win his primary here at our Blue America page. (At the bottom of this post I embedded Dr. Gill's new radio ad. It goes right to the real problem here: a bribed Congress. Give it a listen.

Meanwhile, gluttonous Republicans keep attacking Mrs. Obama for being a Stalinist or Hitler or whatever nonsense pops into their heads. This week she did an interview with Topanga Sena, age 11, a reporter for Scholastic News in Florida.



Uh oh... now she wants to focus on physical fitness-- and moving-- another enemy of the Limbaugh-Sensenbrenner set.

“‘Let’s Move!’ is not about having government tell people what to do, because government doesn't have all the answers. A problem that's this big and affects so many people requires everyone to step up. So we're asking everyone to step up.”

She can probably count on Sensenbrenner for the part about eating french fries everyday.

She added that she loves french fries. “I wish I could eat french fries every single day,” she said. Some conservative pundits have specifically singled out french fries as a food they say Obama’s nutrition campaign would ban.

One of the accomplishments Obama celebrated with her second anniversary tour was the USDA’s new school meal regulations, implemented in January 2012, which seek to ensure public schools serve more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and less sodium, saturated fat and trans fats. According to the White House, the new mandatory standards for federally subsidized school lunch programs are the first major changes in school meal regulations in over 15 years. Republicans in Congress recently pushed back against the new regulations by attempting to drop them from a 2012 spending bill.

The first lady explained that the “Let’s Move!” program is an attempt to make sure government does “its part" to support others' choices.

“Parents have to make some changes at home, you know, but they need the information to be able to make those choices, and they have to have access to affordable foods in their communities, fresh and healthy foods. We need government to do its part, but we need businesses to do their part as well,” she explained. “If we're going to solve this problem, we need everyone to step up. And there's no one solution. … People have to figure out what works best for their family, their budget, their lifestyle, their community."

The first lady launched the anti-obesity initiative in February 2010. In the interview, she touted the support she’s seen from community centers such as the YMCA and YWCAs, Girl Scouts, childcare facilities, the video game industry and faith communities.