The U.S. armed forces have a major recruiting problem: 71% of adults age 18 to 24 in are too overweight to qualify for service. Experts believe there won’t be enough soldiers by the year 2020 as a result.
The Plot To Fatten America Into Submission
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Up that percentage another 29 units and the world would suddenly become a more peaceful place. More Ben & Jerry’s to the people !…
Henri
My college’s newspaper in the 80s had a cartoon picturing a Middle Easterner serving hamburgers to Americans (intended to inflame American hate of Iranians, I can only presume) saying “Death to E’medica”.
That cartoon has come to mind many times over the years and always make me laugh. It was so funny on two levels.
More corporate farm subsidies and throw open the high-fructose corn syrup flood gates!
Our armed forces have faced similar recruiting problems in the past and always persevered.
Can’t find enough recruits with IQs over 90? Lower the bar. Criminal records preventing people from signing up? No problem, remove the nonsensical requirement that they be law-abiding citizens. Wack-jobs, psychos, drug addicts? Why not? If they weren’t a psycho drug addict to start with, they will be after their eighth deployment to Bumfukistan. Might as well start ’em out that way.
Fat troopers can last longer without supplies! Their uniforms can double as tents! There’s less chance that a bullet will hit a vital organ! Everybody wins!
You have left out one subgroup: recruits with Swastika tattoos who are members of white supremacist groups tracked by the FBI who openly blog about getting to shoot brown people and re-import military skills for use on the domestic “front”.
Well, quotas must be met.
McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas? Perhaps, but McDonnell Douglas may be the only branch available once McDonalds has flourished.
The main advantage for hiring overweight people is that they are less likely to draw a pension once they retire from their jobs as drone operators.
> openly blog about getting to shoot brown people
Oh, hell yeah! We’ll make them officers! (Or POTUS, whatevs)
One other subgroup: non-citizen brownish people in economic trouble, i.e. those without pink Cadillacs.
I saw Ted last week in the documentary about Mr. Fish at Cinequest Film Festival. Really good film, about the dilemma of how to make a living as a hard-hitting cartoonist without compromise. Not directly related to this cartoon but I wanted people to know about this documentary.