I also read yesterday that one in five Americans aged 18-34 is obese! Yes, I have noticed the spread widening on Americans as we sidle up to yet our next buffet or super-sized fast food meal.

I personally was in the Las Vegas audience last week when Karl Rove could hardly contain his chortling as he belittled the obesity epidemic we have in America. His slick one-liners rolled easily off his tongue mocking the attention and funds that President Obama's stimulus plan allots to addressing one of America's costliest and most debilitating ills. It surely didn't surprise me that Karl apparently doesn't care that this generation is the first that is scheduled to live less years than their parents, principally because of obesity.

I say arrest this obesity epidemic now, and yes, earmark funds for public awareness programs and treatments. We need to lead by example, as adults and as a nation. We do want our bodies to last as long as our hearts keep pumping, and we do hope to remain vibrant in our golden years. We do want to be able to move with, and play with, our grandchildren or nieces and nephews. There is hope! The TV blockbuster, Biggest Losers is key evidence that with personal will power and the support of others we can win the fight against obesity. We Can Do It Women! and men too, of course.

Apparently the State of New York heard me and others calling for a healthy America, in recently instituting an obesity tax on certain sugared soft drinks.

Even the military is weighted down with ineffectiveness these days, rendering our very national security more vulnerable. The number of service people diagnosed as obese has more than doubled since the 2003 invasion of Baghdad, Iraq.

At the end of the day, we are talking about a slippery slope with regard to so much of America's and the globe's appetite, greed, addiction and/or depression.

I listened to a reformed, yet once-convicted securities representative give an ethics lecture last Friday. He carefully explained that he went step-by-step deeper into oblivion believing he would give only this one kickback; and then never again. Further, how he never figured he'd get caught. His was an addictive game of greed and egotism.

He admitted that the beloved women in his life-both his mother and his wife-warned him of his errant ways, yet he willfully broke their hearts, as well as that of his young sons, by continuing his slide into the grips of greed, eventually losing his family relationships and his possessions, and being imprisoned.

Time will tell the full story of Bernie Madoff, and the myriad other Ponzi scheme architects, yet I suspect that decisions became more and more laced with optimism about add-water-and-stir wealth.

Little attention was paid to the prospect of getting caught. The aire of being above the law permeates a crook's decision making, and in Madoff's case, nary a care about the individual's and foundation's throats he stomped on.

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