Car manufacturers should make huge seats as options (and heavy duty springs and shocks), just don't have me pay for it. I'm tired of subsidizing fat people. If you're too big for that seat on the airplane (and a good indication that you will be is when you can't manage down the aisle), then you should have to buy two tickets. If you have a host of medical ailments because you're fat, requiring a load of expensive medicines , don't expect the taxpayer to bail you out.

The expectation of unearned entitlement in this country needs to come to an end and fast.

But activists for fat people's rights are still not satisfied.

Activists for the right to feel victimized, rather.

People of color cannot help that, religious groups rarely want more than to be recognized, gays might be that way from birth, but only about one million people in the U.S. have some biologically-based, medical condition which causes them to tend to be fat.

The rest have psychological problems, with a lack of self-control ranking highest.

I agree with mike; I have no desire to pay for mitigating the very-easily-predictable-and-preventable problems that someone else has brought upon themselves.
It's like building your home in a flood plain or on the beach - you have to know that you're going to take some water damage once in a while.

I am willing to pay for obese people to go to fat camp once a decade - maybe some of 'em will learn how to eat properly, just as some tobacco addicts quit the vile weed.

And, to that end, I'm also willing to allocate more tax dollars for anti-obesity education.

Maybe fatties subsidise the rest of us normal-sized freeloaders with all the taxable goodies they consume.

It's a bit like the smoking debate here. Smoking-related diseases cost the NHS some £1.7 billion per year, but smokers contribute approximately £8 billion per year to the Treasury in VAT.

Brit:

Not to mention that the baby boomers all keeling over from heart disease is our best bet to keep Social Security afloat.

just make doorways sized so only normal weight people can get through. make it legal to apply cattle prods at will to fatties. maybe have an annual running of the fatties like in pamplona.

Wasn't it about a year ago that the FAA mandated new calculations on passenger weight (upping the 'average' to 185 lbs.)?

Wouldn't it be nice if air-fares were on a graduated scale based on weight of passenger and luggage.
I don't think the restaurant/food/beverage/grocers industries want what any kind anti-obesity education would have to teach to get out on any kind of mass scale ("Stop eating ice cream, pizza, soda, potato chips, french fries, hamburgers, and don't let your kids watch tv and play video games all day.")
Junk food companies (open to interpretation) should be the ones to pay for it, just like the tobacco companies have.

It it just me, or is the foreign press obsessed with the idea that all Americans are behemoths?

I seem to recall a BBC reporter in the US commenting on his surprise at how thin so many Americans were...