Fat people are an easy target—which pretty much goes without saying—for government busybodies who like to tell people how to live.

Big government refuses to leave big people alone and a new study showing that obesity among adult Americans is expected to grow from today’s 36 percent to 42 percent by 2030 is just more propaganda using junk science to take away our God given right to junk food.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is right to call out the bogus report used in a government-led conference to calculate the cost of treating those who will swell the ranks of fatties to over half a trillion dollars over the next two decades.

The government will have to take action against the obesity epidemic for our own good, we are being told, by doing things like taxing soda pop and junk food, restricting food advertising and banning anything yummy.

Massachusetts has recently banned bake good sales by public schools and, most likely, is getting ready to outlaw all fun things involving sugar that might invoke pleasant childhood memories.

It’s being called the “War on Cupcakes,” but it’s more than just that. It’s an outright assault on large Americans and it needs to stop.

I’m not obese, but some of my best friends are skinny-impaired and I have great respect for all that the obese have contributed to this country. They should be celebrated, not picked on by people like Michele Obama and other nitwits who look at them as a drag on society.

To that end, I give you the—

Top 10 Fatties That Have Shaped Our Nation

10. Oprah Winfrey:

Oprah’s contributions to the daytime television talk show format have been considerable, once earning her accolades as the most watched woman and best paid entertainer in the country.

She might have been higher up on this list if not for her propensity to lose weight , gain it back and lose it again. It’s unknown whether she is fat at present, since she no longer has a talk show and is rarely seen. Her draw on the viewing public has definitely thinned. Her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) has lost as much as $330 million since debuting in 2008. She also endorsed Obama in 2008, proving people like her better when she was fat and largely apolitical.

 

9. Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland was a man so big that he was both our 22nd and 24th president. Weighing in at over 250 pounds, he was the second fattest man to sit in the Oval Office.

He was affectionately called “Uncle Jumbo,” by his nephews and nieces and was said to have loved rich food—the more fattening the better.

Cleveland was commonly followed by a thick plume of cigar smoke in The White House from his ever present stogie. He and Mrs. Obama wouldn’t have gotten along very well.

He also loved beer and during his 1870 campaign for district attorney of Erie County, New York, he and his rival for office made a gentleman’s agreement to drink no more than four glasses a day. Cleveland proved to be a flip-flopper on his promise when he decided that four beers was a little too restrictive. It would be nice to return to the days when broken promises would meant ever expanding waistline instead of an ever expanding government.

 

8. Rush Limbaugh:

Rush Limbaugh shares both Cleveland’s love for good food and fine cigars.

Rush, like Cleveland—a constitutionalists—also has an affinity for small, limited government.

The left, which feigns sympathy for fat folks, have often used Limbaugh’s weight to poke fun of him over the years. Al Frank, Saturday Night Live alumnus and U.S. Senator from Minnesota went as far as to pen a book calling Limbaugh a “big, fat liar.” To the dismay of Stuart Smiley and other Limbaugh detractors—doggone it, people like Rush.

His weight has been up and down over his 20-plus years as a radio talk show host, but Rush is still the biggest man on the dial with over 20 million people tuning in to hear him every day.

 

7. Aretha Franklin:

Aretha Franklin, known as The Queen of Soul, is one big momma with a butt-load of talent to match her queen size derriere.

This lady has been belting out soulful sounds for over 50 years.

Throughout all of if her belt size has been growing with her place in music history.

It’s hard not to give a lot of R-E-S-P-E-C-T to a woman with this much talent and poundage.

You would be wise not to disrespect a woman like Aretha.  Few would want her to “sock it” to them. That might cause some serious damage.

 

6. Winfield Scott:

Gen. Winfield Scott was a big man in his time, but the 280-pound military commander of the Mexican-American War, in which he won his greatest fame, would have been a big man in any time.

Over the course of his forty-seven-year military career, he also commanded forces in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the Seminole Wars and, briefly, for the Union Army in the Civil War.

He was a politician, as well, and ran unsuccessfully as the Whig candidate for president in 1852.

The term “Great Scott” is supposed to have originated with him.

It’s uncertain if the phrase was ever used in his presence.

If it ever was it wasn’t used more than once by the same person—that’s pretty safe bet.

 

5. Orson Welles:

Orson Welles was a historic figure of the entertainment industry who left an indubitable mark in theater, radio and cinema.

Not only a superb actor, Welles was a writer, director and producer who changed popular media with his groundbreaking work.

He is best remembered for Caesar, a Broadway adaption of Shakespears’ Julius Ceasar, The War of the Worlds –the most famous broadcast in the history of radio–and Citizen Kane, which many critics and scholars rank as the greatest movie of all time.

He is also remembered as a extreme lard-ass, something many critics and scholars also agree on.

In his early radio career, Welles played the voice of The Shadow, a popular dark-hero radio series.

While others took on the role later, no other voice actor to ever play the role had a shadow that weighed 40 pounds.

 

4. Babe Ruth:

Babe Ruth, the slugger known as “Bambino” and “the Sultan of Swat,” was the fist baseball player to hit a record 60 home runs in one season (1927). There are few athletes who are held in as high regard or remembered as fondly in this country.

Playing with the New York Yankees, Ruth’s lifetime batting average of .342 remains the tenth highest in baseball history.

That number is just slightly more than his weigh-in at team physicals, as Ruth could put away almost as many hot dogs and beers after games as he could put balls over the fence on the baseball diamond. Baseball and eating are both important parts of the American fabric and Babe Ruth was the best of both worlds.

 

3. Elvis Presley:

The King made a deep impression on American popular music when he rocked onto the stage in the early 1950s.

By the time he sadly left the stage in the late 1970s, Elvis was leaving a deep impression on everything he came in contact with—thanks, in part, to his love of of 750-calorie peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Despite his early recordings, which remain timeless after all these years, I liked Elvis better and think he made his best music as a fat man in that weird white sparkling jump suit toward the end of his life.

I still remember the passing of Elvis back in 1977, although I was just a kid at the time.

My mother was a big Elvis fan and I recall her saying that he would be forever 42 years-old.

He will also be forever fat, God rest his rock-n-roll soul.

2. Benjamin Franklin:

 

Ben Franklin was known by world the back in the 18th Century as the arch-type American of his age—an imaginative, innovative hard working optimist.

He could, likewise, serve as the quintessential American of our times—a true fatty.

Franklin was a guy that loved to live life to the fullest, whether is was flying a kite in a thunder storm to unlock the secrets of electricity, spending time with pretty ladies during his visits to France or scarfing down seven course meals in interims of helping found nations and inventing swimming flippers—he did all of that, ya know?

Franklin once wrote in his “Poor Richard’s Almanac that “hunger never saw bad bread.”

Well, Franklin rarely saw hunger and is a testament that Americans’ love of liberty and food dates back as long as we have been a republic.

 

1. William Taft:

Yes, there have been other fat people who might be better remembered for their contributions to American history, but President William Taft has to come in at No. 1 in this list for no other reason than the bathtub story.

Taft, known as “Big Bill” was 6’2″ and 332 pounds—the biggest guy to ever be elected president of the United States.

As the story goes, Taft once got stuck in a his bath tub once at The White House and it took a while for several members of the staff to get him out of his predicament.

After that embarrassing episode, the president had a 7′ long 41″ wide tub installed that could accommodate four normal-sized men.

I kind of wonder if America would ever put a man of such girth in office again with all the abuse that’s being heaped upon the horizontally challenged these days.

There is a guy that I’m holding out for who still gives me hope. Let’s make it happen one day: