Bloated udder

Our federal government brings us another example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

While first lady Michelle Obama dashes about the country lecturing about childhood obesity and eating less fat and leading children in exercises, as she did at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area recently, a New York Times article reveals a government agency is trying to lard up our diets -- and using tax money to do it.

The Times story tells about Dairy Management, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, spending millions pushing fat-laden milk and cheese. The agency advised Domino's Pizza to make a 40 percent cheesier pie and then spent $12 million to market the new higher-calorie dish. One slice of the new pizza contains two-thirds of a day's maximum recommended intake of saturated fat.

These are the people who created the "Got milk?" ad campaign.

The nation's dairies produce far more milk than can be consumed. At one time, the government paid dairies to slaughter cows, while the industry was "moving toward larger, more sophisticated operations that increased productivity through artificial insemination, hormones and lighting that kept cows more active," the Times reported.

The Dairy Management group even continued pushing a campaign claiming dairy products could help with weight loss long after it was disproved.

Dairy Management's chief executive, Thomas P. Gallagher, who was paid $633,475 in 2008, declined to be interviewed for the story.

The only immortal known to man is a government program. They never die, they just grow fatter and fatter.

For all those congressmen still digging diligently for anyplace at all to cut spending, we think we may have found a bloated udder in need of draining.