The Federal Obesity Task Force has launched major anti-fat operations against fast food restaurants, public schools, and hundreds of private citizens in Texas. Weighing scales with capacities up to 2000 pounds have been strategically positioned at most restaurants and at all schools in Houston, Texas, the U.S. city with the dubious distinction of “America’s Fattest City.”

“Our first phase of Operation Bloat Buster is to target the fattest of the fat, and with our special reinforced weight scales at restaurants in Houston, we will prohibit entry to all morbidly obese citizens,” explained Obesity Task Force Field Commander S. Pickens.

“Excessively overweight children attempting to gain entry into public schools will be transported via freight cars to the Gulf Coast and herded aboard Richard Simmons’ Cruise to Lose carnival ships,” Pickens added.

Security will be tight during Operation Bloat Buster. In the event of overweight people disturbing the peace at city-wide “Fat Check Points,” Obesity Control Officers will waft smells of fried chicken and chocolate doughnuts towards protesters in an attempt to lure and safely subdue them into custody.

In response to media journalist John Overmeier’s question, “Can’t they just go home and eat?” Commander Pickens exclaimed,

“Not on my watch! In short order our Obesity Task Force will be issuing food rationing cards and installing weight scales at convenience and grocery stores. No one is going to slip through the cracks.”

Pickens went on to say:

“Our ‘No Bloat Left Behind’ policy will have Obesity Control Officers canvassing neighborhoods and private homes verifying food stocks are in accordance with rationing cards, that no neighbor or friend is providing unauthorized food, and that no food is being grown in excess of governmental set limits.”

“We don’t want people eating more Scrapple or buttered potatoes than they should, that’s all.”

News from the Arab gutter:

Terrorist cells in Baghdad are in mourning for suicide bomber Ahmed al-Khalaf, 19, who was killed by a car bomb Monday, 200 yards from an Iraqi police station, his intended target…

“What kind of God allows the death of people who are on their way to kill innocent people?” insurgent leader Abdulwahid al-Tomizie said. “On the one hand, I am elated that the car-bomb explosion was successful, but the loss of the suicide bomber is a tragedy, as is the survival of all the innocent people he might have killed.”

According to al-Tomizie, al-Khalaf could have killed as many as 40 innocent people, had his life not been cut short.

“It is tragic that al-Khalaf died seven minutes sooner than he intended,” said Hassan Abdul Aziz, leader of a local cabal of Sunni separatists. “To think that he was just yards from his intended target. Our thoughts and prayers are with his terrorist cell.” (theonion.com)

World’s largest retailer Wal-mart has announced they will be replacing all overseas suppliers with U.S. manufacturers employing African Americans working free of charge.

Stockholders sat in stunned silence as Wal-mart CEO H. Lee Scott detailed a plan to “forcibly enlist African Americans to work in manufacturing facilities throughout the U.S. in exchange for housing and food.”

Mr. Scott informed a stockholder who asked what the benefit would be in such a radical shift in sourcing products:

“If our associate companies in China pay Chinese workers 26 cents an hour to make a Regal 34 piece Non-Stick Cookware Set that sells in the U.S. for $28.36, why not have black people work for free manufacturing the product here in the U.S., save the cost of overseas shipping, and while preserving our profit margin sell the Regal Set for less at $24.79?”

Wal-mart has already partnered with the NAACP in an attempt to market their new “Rollblack Pricing” and “Made in America by African Americans” lower pricing strategies.

Lawrence V. Jackson of Wal-mart’s human resources People Division informed confused stockholders:

“The NAACP fit right into our plans, because for years the NAACP has been telling black people that they cannot succeed on their own merits…so we’re simply stepping in and giving black people of America the direction they need in the form of work mandates.”

Government insiders say the Department of Justice and the Labor Department will most likely approve and enforce Wal-mart’s work mandates for blacks, citing past laws relating to black slavery, and as one unnamed official put it, “…laws before the Civil War legalized slavery and they were acceptable then. With slight modifications to the U.S. Constitution and new laws passed, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Wicomico County schools in Maryland celebrated "Respect Diversity Day" as part of their continuing series on appreciating the differences among people. North Salisbury Elementary School opened up the event with rap artist Ja-Cool singing his latest song, "Them Damn Bitches" off his new album Bitches, Bullets, and Crack-Pipes.

11 year old Jimmy Renshaw had this to say following the event: "I known girls is nothin' but dirty hos…Ja-Cool - he all 'ight, like a role-model."

After being spit on and called a "Lil' Bitch" by Ja-Cool, 8 year old Suzy Jane was still wiping the spittle off her flushed face at the end of the concert, but couldn't wait to tell her friends about Ja-Cool's personal attentiveness towards her, saying, "He's so, like…cool."

James M. Bennett High School had the most extravagant exhibition involving sexual orientation acceptance. A long series of individual booths were set up inside of which was a particular "stimulus," the most noteworthy being a middle aged female teacher, a 4 year old infant, an incontinent elderly gentleman, a large albino Norwegian rat, a pair of bedroom slippers, and a non-stick frying pan.

Participating students were stripped naked, heart rate monitors attached to their erogenous zones, and paraded before each booth. Specialized computers monitored each student for one minute's time any sexual arousal while standing in front of the booths.

"Once we can determine a child's sexual interest, the community can validate and assist the child's true sexual development, no matter how diverse," an organizer explained.

One child showed especially elevated levels of sexual excitement in front of the bedroom slippers' booth, much to the chagrin of classmates. A nearby friend of the afflicted child piped up saying, "My mother has some extra slippers, maybe I can get them for you to have sex with."

"This is about kids developing into adults, this is about sharing and responsibility," Board of Education President George I. Whitehead said, wiping a tear from his eye at the child's charitable gesture.

The steroids controversy among professional athletes has prompted a congressional inquiry into the drug’s pervasiveness in sports.

Surely, performance enhancing drugs are merely carrying along the principles of desperate competitiveness that sports embody today.

The good naturedness and true spirit of sports has been replaced with animosity, greed, and self-glorification at the expense of the other player. If steroids is what a player needs to humiliate the other player and to ensure receiving their paycheck at the end of the week, all the better in the sports world’s lack of social graces.

Whenever sporting activities become a ruthless business, they become stripped of their liberating aspects of play. The playing of games is a reflection of the larger scale of life, and with drugs, material desires, and lack of values representative of society at large it is no wonder that sports have succumbed in kind.

Ethically responsible investing, is it for you? It should be if you want to understand fully the consequences of what you invest your dollars in. But in today’s investment ‘race to the bottom’ strategies in maximizing profits, the principles of a higher good give way to investor’s gleaming eyes of greed.

For most Americans, investment knowledge is limited to getting more money out of a company than originally put in or having blind trust in their employer’s 401K retirement plan. The first is better than the second method, but the next step has to be taken: that of finding out what the company actually does in the world.

You’re on your own with this next step since a company’s statement of ethics are difficult to extract. The practice of self-reporting on a company’s ethical character is quite suspicious and pales against the greater question of: Is the self-reporting accurate?

Third party independent monitors who themselves are rated as to their accuracy is currently the best way to really know what a company does in the world. What is needed, ultimately, is for companies to become more transparent and accountable. This way, investors could easily and accurately know whether to responsibly invest in a worthwhile cause.

Read more about ethical investing at The Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com).