Eat a Stick of Butter for Democracy!

Randomly found while perusing Google News:

University of Illinois at Chicago researchers Wednesday reported the rise in obesity will result in a drop in life expectancy.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky's team, writing in the March 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, said obesity currently reduces life expectancy by four to nine months.

The researchers said the life-span effects of obesity could rise two to five years in the next 50 years, possibly exceeding the current life-shortening effects of cancer or heart disease.

Most life-span forecasts are based on historical trends, which the researchers said fail to consider the obesity epidemic.

They noted obesity actually could help keep Social Security solvent because people will die younger.

"One of the consequences of our prediction is that Social Security does not appear to be in nearly as bad a shape as we think," Olshansky said.

"The obese may be inadvertently 'saving' Social Security, but the obese themselves and the healthcare system that cares for them will pay a very heavy price in terms of higher death rates and escalating healthcare costs."

That'a got me to thinking about ways to help Social Security that aren't in the raise-the-retirement-age category or the invest-in-private-accounts category. Really, the only way for Social Security truly to balance the amount of money it takes in with the amount it pays out is to reduce the number of people receiving a Social Security check, right?. Therefore, other than making everyone fat, here are three additional plans to assist our Social Security system that I believe Republicans and Democrats will both appreciate:

1. Distribute contraceptives, but only in poor urban areas. Reduces population, thus number of people collecting unemployment social security benefits. [I was typing way to fast. Sorry.] Would be approved because the Left is pro-birth-control and the Right is anti-poor-people.
2. Stage a massive terrorist attack that obliterates the entire state of Florida. Republicans don't need it to win elections anymore, and they love blowing shit up. Democrats can become pro-Military after another "attack." The state usually splits around 50/50 in voting, so that's a safe bet. And mass quantities of old people who were going to die any day now will no longer need those checks. Added bonus: Disneyworld removed from the face of the earth.
3. Blue states secede from the union and become part of Canada. The North can bring sorely needed jobs and resources to Canada, and Canada brings the social responsibility Blue states are pining for. The Conservative South can then do anything they want—private accounts, prayer in schools, slavery—all of the things us city-folk said were "bad."

In conclusion, if we all get fat, if poor folks stop making babies, if we blow up Florida, and we Northerners get out of the South's backyard, Social Security, and social security, for that matter, will be saved.

Thank you. Vote for Arlo.