Shortly after proclaiming that her husband "has done a phenomenal job" Michelle Obama declared that child obesity is a threat to national security, indicating that perhaps the First Lady is bemused.
It's hardly the first time that a president's wife makes ridiculous statements in public (remember Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy") but this double-whammy just a day apart seems extra bizarre from a highly educated former executive with a prestigious Ivy League law degree.
Associating overweight children with national security sounds incredibly outlandish, however. At a White House ceremony to launch her heavily promoted and expensive new campaign (Let's Move) to end childhood obesity in the U.S., Michelle Obama actually said it's a costly epidemic and a threat to national security.
She attributed the information to a mysterious "recent study" that claims the annual health care cost of obesity-related diseases is $147 billion. Here is where the national security part comes in, according to the First Lady; "This epidemic also impacts the nation's security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service."
Maybe this is how her husband's administration is justifying spending $400 million a year to bring "healthy foods" to low-income neighborhoods and $10 billion to revise a decades-old federal measure that already feeds tens of millions of poor children at school for free.
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