Weeks ahead of Chanukah (Festival of Lights), Republican Senator Rand Paul warned Americans (and Jews looking out for the yummy custard doughnuts) that the federal government is targeting doughnuts, the latest example of the oppressive nanny state in America.
“They’re coming after your doughnuts!” the Kentucky Republican said, referring to the Food and Drug Administration decision to ban trans fats.
Speaking to The Charleston Meeting in South Carolina Monday night, Sen. Paul added that if the FDA was banning trans fats, the employees of the agency should be forced to get healthy themselves.
“I say we should line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this,” Paul said. “I want to see them on the treadmill, and I want to see someone from maybe OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) lashing them while they are working on the treadmill.”
“Because if we’re going to have a nanny state and everybody’s got to eat the right thing, and you can’t eat a doughnut, maybe we just ought to enforce it on the government workers first,” he added.
New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait was quick to rebut Paul’s imaginary charges:
“They are not, in fact, coming after your doughnuts. Trans fats are not essential to make doughnuts or, really, anything,” he wrote “Some restaurants still use trans fats because, even though they’re incredibly bad for you, they’re longer-lasting and slightly cheaper than other oils, and very few customers would ever know the difference.”
(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
13 Responses
The Republicans will do well to run against the “nanny state” but have to keep some of their own extremists from being “nannies” as well on social issues. And that probably means about libertarian tolerance of what you eat, what you smoke, what you ingest, and what you do in bed – as long as you are only hurting yourself. What appears to be hurting the Republicans are “tea party” candidates who lost interest in economics and start talking about how they will run their own “nanny state”.
What it will impact is a huge chunk of supermarket products. You can not have a product from cookies to noodles to muffins, baked with natural oils, packaged, moved to warehouse, moved to distributor, moved to supermarket to sit on a shelf for six weeks. The whole economy in things that don’t go stale will collapse without an alternative stablized fat.
twisted: or it will benefit local manufacturers and create more (low paying) jobs
The picture of these doughnuts must come from Israel, because the American doughnuts have a hole in the middle.
I’m pretty conservative, but the government can ban all sorts of toxic substances, including trans fat, as far as I’m concerned. This stuff is a real health risk and a pain to avoid at the grocery. B’charta b’chaim!
chgoachdus: So you avoid it, why because you don’t want it, should nobody be allowed to choose to eat unhealthy? I also don’t like trans fat, but I won’t start telling other people to start eating healthy
Dunkin Donuts stopped using trans fats without telling anybody to see if anyone noticed the difference. Nobody did. There is no purpose for trans fats. It’s a harmful substance and it’s the government’s job to protect its citizens.
#1 The libertarians (certainly the Ron Paul supporters) believe that the government had no right to monitor for possible terrorist activity among Americans unless they actually commit a crime.
This means that some neo nazi group could mass tens of thousands of weapons for some massive coordinated attack on Jews all accross the country at some pre determined date and time, and they could not be stopped till after they have already murdered Jews en mass, G-d forbid.
As for ingesting of substances, those who are high on them will be driving on the same roads as the rest of us anf those who become homeless from using them and still want them but do not have even one Dime to pay for them, will be breaking into more houses and mugging more people to support their habit.
Tea Partiers want maximum freedom for everyone and they understand that anarchy, is not the way to achieve it.
Try any NY kosher bakery this Chanukah. Delicious custard or jam filled doughnuts – with no hole. The ones with the hole are bland. Hearty appetite!
Banning of trans fat is the same as teh ban on cocaine in coke that has been in effect for genreations.
Cocaine was in the original Coca Cola formula.
ונשמרתם מאוד לנפשותיכם
מן התורה
ואהבת לרעך כמוך
לא תעמוד על דם ריעך
זה הלכה וצריכים לחזק הדבר בדרך התורה
Since the government ends up paying most of the healthcare costs if it’s citizens (through Medicaid, Medicare, and also Social Security, Disability, and others) it has a right to try to keep them healthy against their will.
It has become obvious that left alone, too many Americans are becoming fat, lazy, and unhealthy. (Not to mention stupid – just by looking at their voting record…)
First the kinishes and now the donuts? I can’t take it anymore!