The Soccer Mom Vote

Childhood Obesity

I don’t know how to say it nicely: Americans are fat. And American children are getting fatter and fatter. I really hate to see it. I know that the standard of glamour for American women is ridiculously thin, and it’s obvious that young girls today are impacted by that. I don’t want to imply that that standard is what we need to be pushing our young girls (and boys) toward. But we need to do something to solve this pendulum of extremes between childhood obesity and eating disorders.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “the number of overweight children and teens has continued to rise over the past two decades.”

Doctors and scientists are concerned about the rise of overweight in children and youth because being overweight may lead to the following health problems:

·         Heart disease, caused by:

o        high cholesterol and/or

o        high blood pressure

·         Type 2 diabetes

·         Asthma

·         Sleep apnea

·         Social discrimination

It’s clearly not just about looking good. Studies have repeatedly shown that overweight children and teens are more likely to become obese as adults. As an average American woman in my thirties who has struggled with my own weight all of my life, I believe that maintaining a healthy weight can impact your health and your well-being more than most people realize.

Last month, CNN reported about Chef Ann Cooper, the “renegade lunch lady” and the difference she’s making in American schools . I think her story bears repeating. You can also read her blog. 

The following is an excerpt form the CDC’s web site. Check out this very helpful information and do your best to keep your children and yourselves healthy.

Child and Teen BMI (Body Mass Index) Calculator
Worried about your child’s weight? For children, BMI is used to screen for overweight, but is not a diagnostic tool Click on the link below to measure your child’s BMI.

We Can!
This national education program is designed for parents and caregivers to help children 8-13 years old stay at a healthy weight. The booklet "Finding the Balance: A Parent Resources" offers an array of easy to use practical tips and tools for parents and guardians to help their children and families eat healthy, increase physical activity, and decrease screen time.

Nutrition for Everyone: CDC’s Quick Tips: Healthy Children, Healthy Choices
Quick tips that you can use to serve your children nutritious foods.

MyPyramid.gov
Provides a tailored explanation of how to balance your meals and includes an interactive game for kids.

Energize Your Life!
Provides information about physical activity for you and your children.

FruitsandVeggiesMatter.gov
Great recipes and information about how to incorporate fruits and vegetables in your daily meals.

How to Avoid Portion Size Pitfalls
Confused about portion sizes? Play the CDC’s portion control game!

campaigning while black

I know.  It's getting redundant.  The black chick blathering on about being black.  Bear with me here.  I remember being in college when the only thing worth reading in the University paper was Bloom County.  Then they started having racist incidents in school, and everybody perked up.  I am sure circulation went through the roof when these things flared up, because every little anecdotal thing was reported with the utmost of attention to detail. And everywhere you went on campus, someone was reading the daily campus newspaper.

So when I heard about Michelle Obama's recent comment, my ears perked up.  I would like to thank Mrs. Obama for fanning the flame.  Just when I thought I had nothing to write about, she piped up.

I have been watching for a Michelle Obama incident.  I remember watching her introduce her husband when he won the Senate race.  She listed his credentials, and added a big "MY MAN!" at the end of it.  I thought, she's a little ghetto.

So now we have this statement that she is proud of her country for the first time in her adult life.  She sounds black. 

You mean, *gasp* black people are dissatisfied with America?  You mean, that's like scandalous to announce?  Um, slavery anyone?  Jim Crow, lynching, Driving While Black?  This dissatisfaction with America?  It's like widespread.  But when a presidential candidate's wife says something that alludes to this widespread black sentiment, then it's all of a sudden a death sentence.  Now everyone's noticing this big pink elephant in the middle of the room.  Psst, guess what?  Barak Obama has a black wife.  And I'm not sure, but he may be black, too.

Of course, this is something the Clintons have wanted to talk about all along. And now Michelle has provided them with the perfect opportunity to do so.

It's hilarious to see these broad, open minded liberals falling all over themselves to talk about how angry and ungrateful Michelle Obama is.  Because she ought to be very happy that her husband is allowed to run for President, right? And he's allowed to do well in the race.  *Because we're so broad and open minded.  She better stay in her place.  Because we put her there, and we can take her back down, too.*

Michelle Obama just got caught campaigning while black.

Call for contributors

You might have noticed that posting has been a little slow here lately at The Soccer Mom Vote.  Due to some life changes and obligations elsewhere, we've lost a number of contributors in the recent months.  We wish them all well and thank them for their contributions to the site over the last year!

However, this leaves us a few hands short in keeping the site updated with timely information.  If you enjoy this community and are interested in becoming a contributor, please leave a comment or send an e-mail directly to us at thesoccermomvote@gmail.com.

Hoping to hear from you!  and you!  and you, there in back, slouching down -- you too!

gotta love the bag

I have been using canvas bags for grocery shopping for years now, randomly accumulating bags here and there and they are usually a jumble in a bigger bag that I take to the store with me.  Cashiers were willing to use them, but grudgingly, it seemed.  But while in England I discovered the Sainsbury's Jute bag...for one pound each (about 2$). So I bought about 6 of them and they slide so neatly into a larger bag which I tote to stores.  And seriously, I get MAD respect for the bag. Not just from the hipster/hippie cashiers at Whole Foods either.  At Target.  And Big Lots.  People EVERYWHERE compliment my bags.  I guess looks are everything, after all. Environmentalism just needs to get sexy.  Oh wait, it has, did you hear about the I'm Not a Plastic Bag craziness?

Undecided

The primary elections today, in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., have taken on more importance than expected early in the presidential campaign. Up for grabs? According to NPR, 168 delegates, with most of the attention focused on Virginia ["Virginia will offer the greatest number (83), followed by Maryland (70) and Washington, D.C. (15)"]. Right now, Obama has 943 pledged delegates to Clinton's 895, according to a count by MSNBC -- well short of the 2,025 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. So it's anyone's ball game.

The same NPR article said this: "Virginia hasn't been for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. In recent years, however, Virginia has elected back-to-back Democrats for governor and unseated a Republican senator, and it is favored to win another Senate seat this year. Now, Democrats hope to carry the state in November for their presidential candidate. But first they will have to decide which Democrat has the best chance." And that pretty much summed up my dilemma this morning. Who has the best chance of defeating the Republicans (specifically John McCain since he appears to have all but wrapped up the Republican nomination). As one voter put it: “Who can win? Who can bring in more votes? Who is less divisive? I think Clinton is too divisive. It comes down to: who can bring the party together and bring in independents?”

Is Barack the answer?

Or Hillary?

As I did my research, both candidates appear to be on the same page with regards to the biggest issues. From Health Care to Energy, Education, and the Economy, their plans are similar (though I did find it easier to determine Barack's stand on the issues with his very handy down-loadable file "The Blueprint for Change" available on his website; it took a little more work to find Hillary's actual concrete plans for change). The main difference I could find was their stance on Iraq (my local paper said Hillary's withdrawal plans won't be completed until 2013). Also, I really liked what Barack had to say about Ethics in Washington ("I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. They have not funded my campaign, they will not get a job in my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."). After 8 years of Dick Cheney and Bush cronyism, this is quite a breath of fresh air. Imagine, actual qualified people in important jobs like the head of FEMA.

So what to do? MSNBC said, "the biggest difference between the two “appears to be judgment versus experience: Sen. Obama's media blitz portrays him as the candidate for change — youthful and charismatic — he even took a page from the Clinton handbook using ‘Hope’ in his book title. Sen. Clinton is an accomplished senator, master political tactician and invaluable asset to the party.”

I felt like a teenager cramming for a test as I pored over documents I had downloaded from their sites last night. I continued to read as I waited in line to vote this morning, truly undecided until I put in my voting card. But in the end, I went with my gut, and voted for Obama. I'm sorry Hillary, deeply sorry. As much as I want to see a woman in the White House, I don't think you are the one who will get there, at least not this time. As much as I'd like to see another Clinton leading our country, I don't think you are going to be able to pull this one off. I think Obama is our best hope for both defeating McCain and for giving us real change in the White House. 

Bye, Mitt!

There's a part of me that loves to say I told you so.

Long before Mitt Romney formally announced his Presidential bid, I was predicting he wouldn't make it to the final round.

Romney is the last in a series of GOP governors of Massachusetts who have tried to launch national careers from one of the most liberal states in the country. The only one who was even remotely successful was Paul Cellucci, the most doggedly punitive-minded of the bunch. For a short time he became Ambassador to Canada, leaving the likable, but hapless, Jane Swift in his place.

Fresh off the great Olympic Clean Up caper, Romney swept back into town, brushed Swift aside and became the Republican gubernatorial candidate.

I didn't vote for him, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. There's room in my politics for business-minded pragmatism. Of course, after all his pontificating about doing away with nepotism in state agencies, he installed all his own people wherever he could. They did the same power playing whole lotta nothing that the previous bunch had done. Ah, bureaucrats!

Romney's singular achievement, perhaps the only thing he really accomplished here, was the removal of former State Senate President Billy Bulger from his latest post as President of the University of Massachusetts. You see, Billy has a famous brother Whitey, and, for those of you not in New England, Whitey is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list based on his Irish Mafia connections. Whitey disappeared from Boston years ago, he pops up around the world from time to time like an Elvis sighting. Billy claims not to know where Whitey is, so Mitt punished him by going after his job. In so doing, he deprived UMASS of the best fund raiser the institution had ever had. Thanks, Mitt! There's a feather in your cap.

When a concrete ceiling tile from one of our infamous Big Dig tunnels fell and crushed a motorist to death, Romney blamed the unions, he blamed the government transportation agency he had not been able to take over, and said absolutely nothing about the private companies involved, two of which were later criminally charged by our Democratic Attorney General (one reached a settlement with the State).

Romney is the only one of this crop of Presidential candidates whom I've actually met. I heard him speak at a State House conference on education. While he didn't engage in the blatant teacher-bashing that Cellucci was famous for, he talked predictably about achievement and accountability without ever acknowledging what deep cuts in local aid from the state had done to the schools in non-wealthy communities, and how difficult that made it for struggling schools to provide additional services to those kids who most needed academic support. He was utterly unconcerned about the issues we had come to the State House to discuss.

Mitt Romney personifies many of the reasons that, even though I am a registered Independent, I am rarely able to vote for a Republican. Privileged beyond my wildest dreams, they seem to have little or no empathy for those with fewer opportunities in life. Their connection to the middle class seems to rely solely in stirring up antipathy for those even less fortunate. Their sympathies lie with big business and its wealthy CEOs and shareholders at expense of everything and everyone else. They'd rather invest in prisons than public schools and their "solutions" seem to be similarly punitive in nature, all stick and no carrot.They lecture about values with no evidence of a conscience. It doesn't work for me.

Thankfully, even Republicans are starting to say that it doesn't work for them either (that's not counting those in the Bible Belt who felt Romney wasn't a real Christian). And while I struggle to figure out what "not conservative enough" means when referring to McCain, I am thankful that Mitt Romney, who was so unresponsive to his constituents to the point of mocking us on the campaign trail, has proven himself quite out of touch with the rest of the country as well.