Video- First Lady Michelle Obama Moves with Vancouver Olympians

The kids are so fracking cute.

Video- Highlights from the 2010 White House Easter Egg Roll

Video- First Lady Tackles Childhood Obesity In Q&A With Students

Video- Morning Scenes from the White House Egg Roll

Hop to it: White House adding exercise to Easter

Interesting. The National Park Foundation's website just told me that the White House South Lawn is one of our country’s 392 national parks. Never knew that.

WASHINGTON — First Lady Michelle Obama is taking her campaign against childhood obesity to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

Besides rolling eggs with spoons, children will get a dose of activities to promote healthy living and exercise, including sports, dancing - and even yoga. White House chefs will be on hand to talk about eating right.

Performers at Monday's event will include pop star Justin Bieber and the cast of the television show "Glee." J.K. Rowling, the author of the "Harry Potter" books, and Olympic speed skater Apolo Ohno will also attend.

The Easter Egg Roll is the largest public event held at the White House each year, with 30,000 people from all 50 states set to attend.

Nickelodeon giving `Big Help' award to first lady

Bullshit everywhere, but Michelle keeps plugging along.

NEW YORK – First lady Michelle Obama is getting attention from the Nickelodeon kids' television network — and it has nothing to do with green slime.

Nickelodeon said Thursday it will honor Mrs. Obama with its "Big Help" award at the Kids' Choice Awards. She has taped a message for Saturday's show.

She is being honored for her "Let's Move" campaign to help cut down on childhood obesity.

Nick has been working with Mrs. Obama on the campaign. It has donated $3 million to school and after-school programs to create opportunities for physical play. Nickelodeon executive Marva Smalls says that with Mrs. Obama's activity, forces are aligning not just to place blame but to move forward.

Video- Mrs Obama Speaks on Battling the Childhood Obesity Epidemic at Newseum

Video, Photos- Michelle Obama visits a soccer class

Nice People Mag type stuff for a Saturday morning. Hey, if the Brits think her footwork's good, that's enough for me.

She's introduced a vegetable garden to the White House, has spoken out publicly about her concerns over her daughters' weight and now Michelle Obama has taken to football in a bid to highlight the US obesity crisis.

The First Lady was attending a soccer clinic hosted by the US soccer foundation as part of the 'Let's Move' campaign which aims to give children a healthier lifestyle and teach them how to increase their daily physical exercise

With her immaculate bob and black tracksuit Michelle cut an elegant and enthusiastic figure on the court and showed herself to be pretty neat with her footwork.

Fallujah birth defects blamed on US weapons; doctors told "not to embarrass Americans over the issue"

By GottaLaff

BushCo's fraudulent little war takes yet another turn for the worse:

Birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have soared in recent years, with doctors saying advanced US weaponry such as white phosphorous and depleted uranium shells may have caused a "massive, unprecedented number" of congenital health problems.

A BBC investigative report has found that the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah has reached a rate 13 times higher than that found in Europe. One doctor at a US-built hospital in the city says the number of birth defects has spiked from one or two per month prior to the Iraq war to two or three per day today. [...]

[BBC world affairs editor John] Simpson says the Fallujah doctors who raised the alarm about birth defects were "well aware that what they said went against the government version, and we were told privately that the Iraqi authorities are anxious not to embarrass the Americans over the issue." [...]

Simpson further reported that he had "heard many times" that women in Fallujah were being warned not to have children.

If this is true, and I believe it is, it's inexcusable. There was controversy over the weaponry at the time. Now we see the horrific consequences of actions taken in our name.

I (among many others) don't recall giving my approval, but Boy Georgie and his trainer Dickless McHeartStent were just a tad headstrong and didn't care. About anything. Except their own little power trip.

As for embarrassing Americans, BushCo managed to do that all on their own.

Video- FLOTUS at Let's Move Rally in Jackson, Mississippi

Hmmm, and I just heard one of the R talking heads say that we should be encouraging kids to get out and play instead of reforming health care...

Complete Interview Videos- Michelle Obama on Huckabee

Video- The Today Show: Michelle Obama Moves for Children

Cartoon of the Day

Click to enlarge, via.

Videos- President Obama signs obesity executive order and First Lady introduces Let's Move

Two for the price of one!!

Air Force Threatens to Expel Kids Who Don't Get H1N1 Vaccine

By GottaLaff

One of my Twitter pals, Allen McDuffee, has a rather eyebrow-raising post up at Truthout. Please read the whole thing, but here is the gist:

About 25,000 children in on-base Air Force daycare centers will be forced to receive the H1N1 vaccine or face being barred from school, Truthout has learned following reports from concerned parents. [...]

A parent at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for reprisal against herself and her husband, was disturbed by the complete lack of confidence and answers from the center's administrators.

"What I got was a lot of 'shoulds.' It 'should' be fine. There 'should' be no problems with the vaccine."

"If they're not sure," she said, "why should I be?"

Please read the rest here.

Study Blames 17,000 Deaths On No Insurance

How is even one death "acceptable"? If 17k kids were being killed each year in faulty school buses, wouldn't the Congress be screeching and pulling their hair out to outdo each other in the righteousness of reform?

Researchers said in a news release that a lack of health insurance might have contributed to the deaths of 17,000 hospitalized children in the U.S. over 20 years.

Johns Hopkins Children's Center doctors looked at 23 million hospital records from 37 states and compared death rates for children with insurance and those without.

Uninsured children in the study were 60 percent more likely to die in the hospital than those with insurance.

(snip)

"Can we say with absolute certainty that 17,000 children would have been saved if they had health insurance? Of course not," said investigator David Chang "The point here is that a substantial number of children may be saved by health coverage."

Schools Nationwide to Exercise Continuously for 10 Hours

When my old church used to do this with prayer, they called it a "chain". I like this one better.

Students at more than 350 schools across the country will be working up quite a sweat tomorrow. They will be exercising for 10 hours straight.

But not all at once. In a unique attempt to fight childhood obesity and cuts being made to school physical education programs, elementary, middle, and high schools from New York to Hawaii and Alaska have signed on to a newfangled "fitness relay" event: Each school will have students exercise during a prearranged 15-minute time slot, beginning at 8 a.m. Standard Time. As each short exercise period ends, another school in a different location will pick up where the last school left off, and the pattern will continue for 10 hours, until 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. It's being called the first Exercise United States Day.

The ambitious project is the brainchild of Len Saunders, a physical education instructor in New Jersey and an expert in child health and nutrition. He says that although the concept is "a little gimmicky," his hope is that it will jump-start a trend among young people to adopt regular exercising habits.

"I'm trying to find new ways to motivate kids to exercise, because right now they don't respond to working out on their own," he says.

Wanna bet that somehow the wingers will find a way to morph this into more of that "indoctrination" bullshit?

Latest Republican fear tactic: Health care rationing for disabled children

By GottaLaff

ClusterFox, rev up your oily little gerbil-wheel engines! Here's your next meme! Are you ready? Are you excited? The anticipation is palpable. I believe I can detect the drool from here:

Surrounded by a group of parents clutching pictures of their special needs children, two Republican members of Congress stood in front of the Capitol on Tuesday and warned that President Obama's proposed health care system will lead to a rationing of care for children with disabilities.

Curses! We Dems can't slip anything by these sharpies. And just when we were striving to cut special needs kids off, too.

GOP Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona and Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington said at a news conference that government-run health care systems, wherever they exist in the world, inevitably force health providers to refuse care to people with chonically-ill family members in order to reduce costs. Both members of Congress said the issue hits close to home: McMorris-Rogers has a son with Down Syndrome, and Franks was born with a cleft palate.

Paging Sarah Palin. Paging Sarah "Time to Drag Out Trig" Palin...

[Trent Franks] predicted that the president's health care legislation will lead to "the largest expansion of abortion since Roe vs. Wade."

Well, I should certainly hope so! I've been on a waiting list for a gay abortion for years now! Just imagine how long I'll have to wait if a public option passes!

The two Republicans then heard from nearly a dozen parents who claimed that their disabled children would be discriminated against under the Democratic plan.

Those clever Rushpublics! Always ready with a cogent argument. Why, I bet they can point us to the EXACT language that PRECISELY spells out how disabled kids will be excluded.

McMorris-Rogers could not point to any specific language in the legislation currently before Congress that would deny health care to disabled children, but she said she and the families were worried that a government-run health insurance plan would give power to a government bureaucrat who would be able to decide whether or not "certain procedures or certain devices" would be covered for individuals.

I wonder if there's language that addresses how government bureaucrats will decide whether or not to treat nutcases with irrational fears.

The independent fact-checker PolitiFact wrote last month that there "is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's 'level of productivity in society' to determine whether they are 'worthy' of health care."

Pshyeah, as if THAT matters.

Socialist healthcare horror story

I've been meaning to get this out there for you guys to read, since it really hit the mark for me. I'll be emailing it around today, and if you like it, you should too. Here is what I consider the nut graph about Jerome's childs illness, but the whole thing is here.

So, we did not have to spend a single cent. We got support to be available for him. He gets top notch treatment. We never had to wait for anything. And this is available to absolutely everybody in France, irrespective of your job, age or family situation. If you are badly sick or injured, you simply do not have to worry about money at any time, nor about lack of care.