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**Written by Doug Powers

Rest assured, Mike Huckabee will aggressively defend this practice ASAP.

From J.P. Freire at the Washington Examiner:

With a schedule as hectic as President Obama’s it must be hard to stick to a training regimen without help — but why does he insist on having his old trainer fly out from Chicago to D.C. regularly when Obama and his wife exhort the rest of us to drive less? And in a recession? According to Ashley Parker at the New York Times, Obama’s fitness czar Cornell McClellan comes out to D.C. every week:

Mr. McClellan grew up practicing martial arts, eventually earning a black belt, and as a college student realized that he had a knack for working with people. He owns Naturally Fit, a personal training and wellness center in Chicago, and now spends part of his week in Washington at Mr. Obama’s request.

“It was an easy sell for me, because I thought of it as kind of a duty, to serve the president,” said Mr. McClellan, who works out with the first couple, often in the early morning, at the gym in the White House residence. Mr. and Mrs. Obama both try to exercise for at least an hour every day, and Mr. McClellan says he usually sees them two to four times a week, depending on their schedules.

Read the rest here.

The “buy local” campaign the White House pushes must be meant for the rest of us — there are dozens and dozens of personal trainers in the DC area.

The White House has expressed a desire to reduce carbon emissions produced by the government, and Obama recently allowed 40,000 federal employees to telecommute for a week to cut down on travel emissions. It seems as if a trainer a thousand miles away could be just as effective appearing in the gym on a big screen TV.

And if all other workout options failed they could play “where’s my purse” to stay in shape as prescribed by Let’s Move — it’d be cheaper and better for the environment than flying a guy to and from DC several times a week.

Update: I’ve gotten a couple of emails that, to make them sound more politely disagreeable than they actually were, said, “if it’s their own money and not taxpayer money paying for it, it’s really none of your business.”

I’d agree wholeheartedly if this wasn’t coming from a slice of America continually telling us that our drives to and from work — not to mention how much we run our lawnmowers and how far our food had to travel before reaching our refrigerators — are killing the planet, but can find nothing wrong with flying in Richard Simmons from Timbuktu three times a week to supervise pilates and sit-ups.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe