“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
Is this the work that the Fed should be doing in the first place and they still can’t get it right?
Feds spent $800,000 studying dating prospects for obese teenage girls
It isn’t much of a secret that overweight girls tend to have harder times getting dates to the prom, much less boyfriends. But federal officials apparently wanted scientific proof, so they spent $800,000 studying obese teenage romances. Last year, the National Institutes of Health, the government’s health research arm, gave nearly a half-million in taxpayer dollars to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to monitor groups of teenage girls to determine how obesity affects their dating lives and their ability to form relationships.
*I* could have told them
80-90% of what they needed to know in 15 minutes and for free. Most adults could – this is just common sense. But in this time of Progressivism and victimhood mentality, these young’uns just HAVE to be oppressed and must be helped. Because: EQUALITY! or something. Seriously, if words mean something (as opposed to meaning ANYTHING in today’s distortion of the common language), is this an enumerated power of the Federal Government?
Like I said, the answers are simple:
“Mounting evidence demonstrates that weight influences intimate (i.e., dating and sexual) relationship formation and sexual negotiations among adolescent girls,” the project description states. “Obese girls consistently report having fewer dating and sexual experiences, but more sexual risk behaviors (i.e., condom nonuse) once they are sexually active.”
But I guess this is the “professionalization” of everything nowadays – if you aren’t paying some Smart People bocoup bucks, there’s no answer. Even as this has been known, well, forever, that “larger girls” have fewer dates? Not a hard and fast “rule” but a rather common observation? Who gets more dates: a plus size gal or the fit-and-trim female athlete? Here’s the truth of it – most guys want to date the hot cute chicks. That’s just human nature. Hard wired. Only a dope thinks it is different. But the Social Justice Warriors must be thinking that weight is a “social construct” (yeah, whatEVAH!).
The thing that disturbs more even more than the price tag is the absolute acceptance that teenaged girls should be having sex. And yes, teens back in my day did – but it wasn’t condoned by the adults. Nowadays? I guess so – after all, with the nation’s rejection of Judeo-Christian morality and traditions, who would say they wouldn’t see this coming. My generation’s mantra of “if it feels good…” has become a social pillar – after effects be damned (like the skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births).
And this line just had my head shaking sadly:
Using data from two national studies, researchers will compare the love lives of obese and non-obese girls to determine whether heavier teens “experience a delay in the development of peer and intimate relationship skills compared to non-obese girls,” then compare the characteristics of obese girls’ relationships to those of skinny girls, and see how the differences shape their sexual habits over time.
Yeah, well, if one has fewer dates, one has less opportunities to learn dating skills – isn’t that obvious? But it was that “intimate” skills that got me sighing – really, do these nitwits expect a teenage girl to be sexually expert nowadays? And yes, I am of the opinion that these kinds of skills are the domain of the marriage bed and just not any old mattress. But again, the sexual revolution, I guess, has won out – and we are already reaping the seeds that were planted back in the 60s and it is not pretty.
But back to these “researchers” – seriously, TWO years are needed to study this? Taxpayers have to keep paying for this???
The original project, which was first awarded in 2014, has been extended for a second year, with funding budgeted through 2016. The study is raising eyebrows among taxpayers’ advocates, who say the grant is a ridiculous waste of hardworking Americans’ money by an agency that constantly bemoans a lack of congressional funding for scientific research.
And just like the EPA destroying the Animus River by letting out millions of gallons of toxic gold mine waste, the NIH goes all PC for cover:
In a statement to The Times, the NIH defended the grant, saying it fell under the agency’s research mission to address the full spectrum of human health across all populations of Americans. I bet if I took the time, we could probably dredge up the actual origination of its mission as I’m betting that like all other bureaucracies, they’ve extended their mission FAR beyond that original one; that’s what bureaucracies do. And what happens when Big Flashlights show up? Yeah, you get this:
A spokeswoman for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia declined to comment on federal funding projects.
Let me be unPC for a second here and let these overpriced nitwits (with our money) in on a secret:
According to the grant, studies have consistently shown that obese adolescent girls engage in more risky sexual behavior compared with non-obese girls. But few studies have “examined the mechanisms underlying this association” or the causes behind these risky habits, presumably obesity.
Umm, how about “eating too much” for whatever reason? That’s what makes you fat. Everything else floats downhill from there. And the risky sexual behavior? How about society sending signals that sex is OK at any age and anyway you want it? And let me go out on a rhetorical limb here – horny guys and chubby girls who otherwise can’t get a date. Certainly this hasn’t changed much since I was a teen those 40 years ago; it happened then and happens today. It’s just that society says “sure” and we have a Fed government that believes, even with an $18T debt, that it has the bucks to study pretty much anything it wants to…
…but wasn’t ready for a REAL health scare like Ebola coming to the US. THis is what happens with “mission creep”. Sure you THINK you’re doing lots but the expertise of the core mission items goes out for a walk.
According to NIH’s statement, “The study is expected to provide information for developing and improving interventions to reduce risky sexual behavior in adolescent girls. The findings could be used to develop interventions to help high risk adolescents, such as unprotected sex.”
The Washington Times has a few others as well:
- $2.6 million since 2011 on a weight-loss program for truck drivers.
- $2 million since 2012 on an online campaign to get women to nag their husbands to quit using smokeless tobacco.
- Nearly $450,000 on a smoking cessation program for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.
And can forget the shrimp on a treadmill “research”?
