It would seem, at least in this day and age, that there is no such thing as too far. We are pushed and we back up a step… We’re threatened and we back down… We are attacked and we wonder if we deserved it…

I have to say that this is beginning to make me sick. Has our country lost its backbone completely? Have we lost all of the things that we have stood for since the founding of our country? After all, look at how our country was founded. Great Britain overstepped their rule and in return, we kicked them out. Since then, every time America has been threatened in any way, we have stood up and put our boots up the asses of somebody.  Even if that meant going after our own states when they threatened American values, as with the civil war, we didn’t back down.

The last time I saw this sort of action was in 2001, as a response to the 9/11 attacks. Prior to that I saw it in 1991, which was  enforcement of the Carter doctrine. Prior to that even was the cold war in its entirety, where we stood fast and held a hard line against the Soviets. Either way, we stood our ground through those years.

However, since 2001, I think we have seen a severe dip in our country’s fighting spirit. I find it curious that we have become such a country of apology. Somehow we have devolved into a society who blames itself for everything, or worse yet, blames the government for everything that happens. I don’t think that there has ever been a period in history where more Americans stood up and proclaimed that America is evil or that they hated America and what America stands for than now. And that fact alone disturbs me to no end.

What stirs this up is the fact that our Vice President was attacked while visiting a base in Afghanistan, and the Taliban announced that he was their target. So now, not only are our soldiers being targeted, and our civilians being targeted, but now our elected officials are being specifically targeted. At any other point in history, this would be an absolute outrage, and the masses would be stirred up something fierce. Targeting American interests is bad enough, but attempting to assassinate our Vice President would be absolutely unacceptable.

However, this is not what I am seeing. In fact, I have already seen more people who were concerned with the fact that he didn’t die since they don’t like him personally or they don’t like the Bush administration in general! How sick is that? I mean, I don’t care if you personally don’t like the guy, but he is a representative of the United States government, an elected official, and a symbol of our democracy. Any attempt on his life is a threat to the very fiber of America, and yet people are hardly stirred about this. In fact, I would be willing to bet that Ms. Spears shaving her head stirred up more people… Or at least had more media coverage.

There is nothing about this that is right, or American. I fear the direction that we are skidding int, and I wonder what it will take for things to change? Worse yet, I fear what would happen to us if we had another 9/11 style attack on our own soil. Right now we are so apathetic and divided, I wonder if we could pull together again and rally behind our own country, or if it would become a breaking point that would rip us apart?

God I miss the cold war. I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t stress it enough. The cold war was great. Ya know why? Because it gave us something worthwhile to stress out about. We had strong leaders going up against other strong leaders, and we were all afraid of nuclear annihilation or worse yet, being overrun by communists! What could be worse than being forced to be a red? Yikes!

But now that the cold war is over, what do we really have to stress about? Well… Letsee, since I have been old enough to appreciate things to stress about, what sorts of things have been forced down my throat by the knee-jerk media?

Y2K… All the planes were going to fall out of the sky, banks were going to loose all of our money, and defense was going to become inop… Didn’t happen.
Mad Cow… Infected cows were going to be the end of meat eating human beings as we know it… To date, 170 deaths world wide since, only 6 of which were in the US.
Bird Flu… One of my personal favorites. The pandemic that is going to wipe out half the global population. So far, 167 deaths, almost all of which are 3rd world where people are licking dead birds for some reason.
Global Warming… We;re all going to suffer dearly for our way of living. Seas will rise 20 feet, the poles are going to melt away, crops will die, penguins will die and polar bear numbers are diminishing. Or are they? More politicians than scientists are making these claims, and more scientists than politicians are arguing against global warming. Want to make any bets as to who’s right on this?
Terrorism… We had better watch out or we’re going to be killed by terrorist assholes. Be careful when you fly, be careful at malls.. Better yet, just don’t leave your house. Ya know, you have a better chance of getting killed by a deer. Unless you live in Baghdad, in which case I’d advise you don’t leave your home.
Hurricanes… Last year’s hurricane season was predicted to be the worst hurricane season to date. At least the was the post-Katrina prediction. But last time I checked, we didn’t have any major landfalls last season. Oops.
Breast Implants… The silicone in the implants causes cancer and will start leaking if you even look at them too sternly. Women had better get them removed right now! Turns out it was a lie, they don’t cause cancer. In fact, it was all a ruse by a lawyer who simply found a way to make money off of panic. He now owns a collection of 900 cars.

Anyway, there’s more, but you get the picture. Where is all of this fuel coming from? Oh yeah… The media. Do we really not have anything etter to do with our lives than to stress out about things that we really shouldn’t worry about? Big or small, the media is rocking everything out of proportion, and it’s really starting to piss me off to no end.
I mean, just this past weekend we got to see what the media does to mundane events. I paged through all of the warning and articles about this massivce snowstorm that we were going to get up here. It was supposed to start friday evening and was going to incapacitate the area until monday. Our local Wally World was packed thursday and friday. People were stocking up and it looked like some people were getting prepared for the apocalypse. Well, I’ll tell you. We got maybe 5 or 6 inches total all weekend. And let me break down what I saw…
Friday afternoon the media predicted the apocalypse. 18 inches or more…
Friday night we got some freezing rain and maybe a half inch of snow.
Saturday morning media says that the worst has yet to come and that we got lucky on friday. Saturday afternoon/night is going to bring 10 or more inches. Sunday will bring more snow and winds so bad that we will have dangerous whiteouts all over.
Saturday afternoon… The snow lightly falls all afternoon and brings a couple inches at best. Saturday night does the same.
Sunday morning… Media says there might be more snow, but it’s a 50/50 chance. The breeze is light. It doesn’t snow enough to even warrant the plows to come out. In fact, the plows come out only 3 or 4 times all weekend long.

So where was the apocalypse? Was all the panic and hoarding worth it? This all sounds very familiar.
See, I think this all has to do with the fact that the media hasn’t had much to panic about lately. Its been a mild winter, and the only thing they’ve had to get excited about was the cold a few weeks back. Now we finally get some snow predicted, and the media runs hog-wild on us! What is really peculiar is that I saw more panic about this snow than I did when it was 30 below zero out.

So, to bring this thing full circle… I’m tired of the stress. I have high blood pressure anyway, and that’s just from normal day to day stress. The media reports on heart disease all the time, but do they ever stop to realize that perhaps they are the ones that are contributing the most to hypertension, depression and anxiety in America today? I mean, these days every event we’re told to worry about is replaced with a new one as soon as it starts to die down. It’s really one thing after another, and I’m really reaching a breaking point here.

So if anybody has any ideas as to how we can get away from this sort of thing, or how we can change the way things are… I’m open for suggestions…

I’m beginning to wonder why I read my RSS feeds every morning. It’s absolutely depressing. I’m not talking about the crime or “human interest” stories. I’m talking about all the signs that we’re sliding into some sort of crazy social and political breakdown, and it’s being spearheaded by a bunch of idiots (ninnies).

I mean, take for instance the fact the Gov. Pawlenty just signed and approved the renewable energy act for the state. What this basically means is that the state wants to be the “greenest” state in the union. However, what this really translates to is that Minnesotans and Western Wisconsin residents who use Minnesota utilities, will have to shoulder the financial burden of using horribly inefficient power generation. So, because of the immediate global warming bandwagon bullcrap, we get to pay the price in the future.

What is really amazing is that one of the founders of greenpeace came here and spoke about nuclear power being the greenest energy, and ya know what? Nobody listened. I mean, holy shit, these guys can’t see anything further than their own noses!

I dunno. I am just so sick and tired of all the enivironmental nuttiness that is creeping into every aspect of our lives… And let me tell you, if I have to start paying higher energy bills in order to support “global warming initiatives”, I’m going to fucking explode. Seriously. They’ll be able to spot my temper tantrum from the international space station. My bills suck as it is. I don’t know how many of you are homeowners out there, but energy bills suck ass.

I would like to sit down with Al Gore and kindly ask him what planet he lives on, and if he can look me square in the eye and tell me that it is Earth, and that Earth is on it’s way to a global warming induced apocalypse, I would calmly reach out and grab him about the neck and shake him until he stops twitching. I mean, how did this guy get to be the spokesperson for questionable science?
Well.
I suppose I already know the answer to that. Morons rusually rally behind the biggest moron. And soon he will be Dr. Biggest Moron, since the University of Minnesota is going to bestow an honrary doctorate degree upon him for his work in global warming (work that wouldn’t be able to even pass basic college science courses mind you)… Ugh. Can you imagine where we’d be if this guy had been elected president in 2000? Holy crap, we’d be living in straw huts and traveling via donkey caravan (assuming donkeys didn’t get banned because of their methane emission levels). Now there’s a scary thought.

Hehe, there he is… Has anybody ever asked to measure the greenhouse gas emissions from this windbag’s mouth??

So the question is… What can we do about this? We’ve slid into a scary state of government where the people no longer have any say in things. I mean, we get taxation without representation, we get state governments voting to raise their own salaries (which is against the constitution), we get no say as to where our tax dollars are spent.. We get tax funded stadiums, unpopular wars, jetsetting house speakers… Amnesty, tuition breaks and jobs for illegal aliens?? I don’t know about you, but I loose several hundred dollars per paycheck to taxes, and I get nothing in return. In fact, my tax dollars are going to support everything that I disagree with, which really pisses me off.
So again. What do we do?
Write letters? Revolt? Undermine? Sit back and take it in the rear??
Ugh, it’s giving me a headache just thinking about it.

So on another website that I frequently rant at, the KTLK FM Talk Spot, the topic of real men (gentlemen?) was brought up, which sparked some interest in me.

The individual who brought it up made a reference to the fact that she was starting to loose faith in real men. This got me wondering, and perhaps this is simply just an expansion on yesterday’s post.

What is a man these days? When I decided to look at what men are considered to be ‘top’ as rated by other men (we won’t get into what most women consider to be top), I was horrified. If you want the full list, check out the askmen.com list here, but I’ll just look at the top 5…
#5: Tom Ford - fashion designer (wtf??)
#4: Lance Armstrong - bicycle racer
#3: Richard Branson - eccentric CEO (Virgin) and environmental activist
#2: Jay Z - rapper and owner of powerhouse hip hop labels
#1: George Clooney - actor/director and humanitarian activist
Anyway, the rest of the list is questionable at best. But it begs to ask why we consider these people to be “real” men? None of these people are leaders, and most are just drops in the bucket.

So with this in mind, how do we rate our men? Success? Wealth? Ability to make headlines? Hell, about the only one who belongs up there is Lance Armstrong, and even that is questionable. After all, if he were really the inspiration he were made out to be, I don’t think we’d be facing such an obesity/couch potato crisis in America right now.

Sadly, I don’t know what the answer is. The former icons of man seem to have faded away, replaced by men who know how to make money or raise stinks about things. I’m honestly surprised that Brad Pitt wasn’t in the top 5, considering his high level of stinkdom.
But what happened to the John Wayne’s and George Patton’s? What happened to the hunky scientists from all those old movies? Or the hunky adventurers? Even the Indiana Jones’s?
It seems that in this day and age, if you:
- carry a gun you’re a right wing nut
- save the girl you’re a sexist pig
- chase the girl you’re a pervert
- shoot the bad guy you’re a criminal
- hold your head up high, with your back straight, you’re egotistical
… Well, you get the picture. It’s a sad state of affairs that us men have gotten ourselves mixed up in. At what point did we decide that wussy was in? When did we toss aside those things that defined men in lieu of all those superficial things?

When is it that charisma and brains went out of style, to be replaced with wealth and a pretty face?

And the sad part is that it is getting worse! I may not have grown up the manliest man, but I still grew up playing with Tonka trucks (the metal ones, not the plastic crap), GI Joe and Matchbox cars. I also played “Army” with the neighborhood boys and learned how to apply camouflage makeup and aim a plastic M16 at a young age. What do young boys do now? I haven’t been to the store lately, but I can assure you that they’re not doing activities or playing with toys that will help them become a better man. Even those things that should build better men are become soft. When I went to boot camp, they were already trying to cut out anything that might be “offensive” because people were complaining. Things like swearing, insulting the recruits, punishing recruits etc… At the time, the phasing out wasn’t working because the current staff was old Navy, and sure weren’t going to go soft.. But I have heard that since then, things have gone downhill as the old salts were being replaced by the new, kinder and gentler staff. They might as well just rename boot camp to club med

Either way, this de-manning of man is taking its toll all over the place. Everything has become soft and wussy. All we do is apologize and try to appease everybody when we should be standing up and paving the way towards the future as we see it should be.

The path before us was paved by men of courage and honor. I fear what the path ahead of us will be paved with…

And just because I need something to feel manly about, here’s an M1 Abrams tank laying waste to something wussy.

Ok, so I have a collection of movies that I watch when I am down and in need of inspiration… Movies like We Were Soldiers, K19, Patton and the Band of Brothers series. Last night’s choice was Patton. Always a good flick. But it really got me thinking. What ever happened to people of greatness? Do we have any people of greatness today?

I had the pleasure of meeting General Tommy Franks while I was in the service. At the time, he was the commander of US Central Command, which made him pretty high up the monkey tree of military power. Anyway, he was a pretty good guy. He came aboard my boat and thanked us for our response to 9/11 and told us he had a message from America to us, and would stay as long as it took to hug each and every one of us. Interesting. He had charisma and seemed to be a pretty good leader, but he was lacking something. He was missing that greatness that it takes to lead a military force without question.

I also had more than one run in with various Admirals, including being personally invited to the Flag Bridge of the Enterprise to meet our Flag Officer and get decorated by him and our Skipper. Again, just like General Franks, the Admiral was a good man, and did a good job of leading our battle group through the post 9/11 mess, but he was not a great man of power.

What happened to the people like George S. Patton Jr.? What happened to the people who could terrorize across North Africa and Europe and strike fear into the hearts of the enemy? I mean, the Fuhrer himself knew Patton’s name, and feared his capabilities… The only reason an enemy would know the name of a General now would be because a General was getting scolded on international television for mistreatment of prisoners or something equally as asinine. It makes me wonder: has war changed so much, or is it the people involved that have changed?

Part of me thinks that we have become a society of WUSSIES. I mean, Patton’s 3rd Army was responsible for over 1.5 million enemy casualties during his European campaign. That doesn’t include North Africa or Sicily. This is post D-Day numbers. By todays viewpoint, that would be unheard of. I mean, our society get uppity when people die in any numbers. But think about it, 3000+ soldiers dead in how many years? Ok, it sucks to loose any soldiers, but a war or a conflict produces casualties. Anybody who thinks otherwise needs to have their head examined. Wishful thinking, that sort of thinking that we’re doing today, is a bad thing. We have somehow deluded ourselves with such unrealistic expectations that we think that 3000 KIA’s during the course of a multi-year war is horrible and that we should pull out and concede defeat!

What is especially bothersome is that we haven’t had anybody who could stand up and slap our society back into reality. Instead our government and military leaders bog themselves down with frivolous arguing about silly things, while all the while the military gets its hands tied which keeps them from being able to adequately do their jobs.

What we need is a hero, or heroes, who can pull this country back together through their actions and leadership. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for, but I’m beginning to seriously doubt if it’s something we will ever see again. And I’m tired of hearing about the “everyday heroes” blah blah blah. Yeah, the police and firefighters and soldiers and sailors and whomever else volunteers to put themselves in harms way are heroes.. But ya know what? They don’t inspire greatness. They’re not a Patton or an Eisenhower, or Rommel… People who could inspire and lead people against the odds and without question. They will not be the people who instill a sense of greatness and awe in others.

What we really need is the return of people who, when the show up, the enemy goes “oh shit!” People who are known for being brave and tough and who can stand up against the enemy and give them the middle finger alongside a wide grin. See, that is what the enemy fears. What they do not fear is an opponent who does everything they can to kiss the asses of the enemy because they need to appease the press/media and the bleeding heart crybabies back home.

Believe me, you’re going to accomplish more by driving a brigade of armor across enemy lines and not stopping until you’re knocking on their leader’s door then you are going to by tiptoeing around and trying to make yourself look like the bleeding heart good guy driven by the opinions of the media…

Ok, so I was reading my RSS feeds this morning, and it came to my attention that Minnesota is pushing through a bill that would allow for the taxation of non-medically necessary plastic surgery.

Interesting. I guess it is something I hadn’t ever really thought much about. I guess it makes sense. As much as I rail on the dems for always wanting to raise taxes and how they want to tax the shit out of everything… This is something I might actually agree with, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons that they do. But after all, we pay taxes for other luxury goods and services, so why should cosemetic plastic surgery be exempt?

I mean, think of it this way… Had we taxed this:

We probably would have been able to fund NASA and probably a moon base for the next decade or more…

Whatever. This brings me to my next point… What do you think of non-medically necessary plastic surgery? Personally, I disagree with it, which was a rather massive point of contention between my ex wife and myself. See, she was a firm believer in plastic surgery, and believed that if it makes you feel better about yourself, then you should do it. I took the contrary view of that and held that if it takes plastic surgery for you to feel good about yourself, you’ve got bigger problems that need to be addressed. She also believed that plastic surger should be used to repair past life mistakes (i.e. if you allowed yourself to get chubby and then lost the weight, you should follow up with plastic surgery to restore your body to so called “perfection”)… Again, Ryan raises the bullshit flag on this one, because you’re simply providing an excuse for excessive living; that being the mentality that you can live how you want and do what you want because in the end you can let the doctors fix you all back up again.

So as you can see, this was a point of tension that was never resolved (namely the only need for plastic surgery in her case was the need she had in her own head), and needless to say, after we divorced she had plastic surgery done (although I never asked what she did). She also got a job working in a strip club, which was an interesting event considering… But that may have to be a rant for another day.

So, long story short, what do any of you think…
About plastic surgery?
About the idea of taxing plastic surgery?
About back taxing Michael Jackson to fund NASA??? haha, just kidding. He would’ve had to have his surgery in Minnesota to be taxed like that. But I’m sure there are some plastic Minnesotans out there who could fund NASA and then some.