Just another Reality-based bubble in the foam of the multiverse.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

What, nobody wants to go to exotic places, meet interesting people, and kill them?

The Pentagon is disgusted with the state of Amerikan Youth:

More than a third of American youth of military age are unfit for service, mainly because they are too fat or sickly, the Army Times reports, quoting the latest Pentagon figures.

Most of the rest are too dumb or have used too many drugs to qualify, the study shows.

The report says 35% of the 31 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified because of physical and medical issues.

"The major component of this is obesity," Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon's director of accessions, tells the Times. "We have an obesity crisis in the country. There's no question about it."

He also said young people, by and large, can't do push-ups.

"And they can't do pull-ups," Gilroy says. " And they can't run..."


Tsk, tsk.

Well, Centurions, I can do 50 push ups, and run a marathon, and I've got a Ph.D. in a biomedical science, too. At 6'2" and 170 lbs, I think I can meet your fitness standards. I've looked this way since I was 18- which was 35 years ago... so it looks like you can't get me even if you talk the DINOcrats into reviving the draft to staff your excellent adventures in the land of sand, oil, and poppies.

Incidently, I am doing my experienced and energetic best to subvert your attempts to turn this Republic into an Empire.

The last lines in this little hissy fit from the Centurions are the really hilarious ones:

Update at 1:06 p.m. ET: The Times reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a group of retired military officers will issue a report on Thursday warning that the situation is so dire it amounts to a threat to national security.

That study will show that when all factors are considered, 75% of military-age youth are not eligible to serve.


The biggest threat to national security I know of resides in Washington, D.C., has thousands of bases across the globe, a budget that is essentially a blank check for endless war, and increasingly relies on robotics to carry out its murderous agenda.

Now there's a threat to National Security!

1 comment:

Wiglaf said...

The wheezing, paunchy irony is that any solutions to this quite real ill-health epidemic are themselves unAmerikan: consume less corn products, spend less time at the mall and the cineplex, bike from an apartment instead of buying a car and a house in the suburbs, stop taking the expensive happy pills – all of these are bad for The Economy, and supposedly what our Defenders of the American Way of Life were saving us from having to do.