OK, listen up all you wussies out there. I know that we mistakingly bred an entire generation of candy ass sofities… And in turn they bred and created a generation of even softer pansies… But seriously, let’s get real here for a minute…

If you all don’t start butching up a bit and suck it up and start living on the edge just a little bit, we’re lost. And I’m nopt talking sort of lost here, I’m talking lost as in we could be conquered by a tribe of wheelchair-bound pygmies because we’re too scared of our own shadows and hiding under our beds.

Wait, what?

You heard me, we’re becoming so damned wussy over here that we won’t even be able to hold ourselves together in the face of even the most pathetic threat. Don’t believe me? Look at health care.

Why are we having health care rammed down our throats? Because a growing number of spineless ninnies with very loud mouths are crying that they shouldn’t have to take care of themselves. They are whining and sniviling and begging for somebody to coddle them because, well, it’s just too damned hard to take care of themselves.

Ah, personal responsibility sucks, doesn’t it?

But why are we here to begin with?

It’s easy. People are a bunch of Wussies! They are so scared that if they stumble they mightget a boo boo… And so they have enlisted the help of the government to pad the ground so that no person will get an unnecessary owie… Of course, an unfortunate side effect of that is that they also opened up door for the government to mandate that we pad ourselves as well – but that’s ok because it’s for our own good, right? In fact, because we shouldn’t have to make the decision ourselves, we had the right to take a personal risk that might potentially cause an owie taken away from us completely.

Is this the life we want to live? Is this the legacy we want to leave in our wake? Are people 100 years from now going to look back at us and wonder how in the hell their ancestors could have been such a bunch of terrified Wussies that they were willing to hand over dominion over their own bodies to the government?

Think about it…

To say that there is a little bit of swine flu fear mongering going on out there right now would be a glaring understatement, would it not? So it got me thinking… Are we to blame for this?

What do I mean? Well, has our culturing and nuturing of the wussy society made us so soft that the flu now has the ability to kick us in the ass? I think so, but then again I’m biased… After all, not only did I not wash my hands as a child, I survived time aboard an aircraft carrier – perhaps one of the most germ-ridden places the planet has ever known. As such, I don’t often get sick. Or when I do, it comes and goes in a day or two and I’m proud to sport a stronger immune system as a result.

But apparently I am an anomoly in these days of bubble children and anti-bacterial soap in every purse. So again I ask, have we inadvertantly created a population of wussies with allof our germaphobe paranoia and overprotection? Worse yet, have we been testing life – more specifically the idea that life will addapt to survive – and creating super tough mega bugs?

Evolution and genetic mutation is a bitch. If we try and wipe out flu bugs (or any other potential illnesses) by obsessively washing our hands with anti-bacterial soap, vaccinating against things every single year and hiding under our beds every time somebody shows signs of a cough and a fever, what is going to be left? Yes, we will have knocked down the wussier bugs, but what will be left will be real nasty and we will not have the natural defenses in place that big and nasty’s weaker brother may have given us.

Whoops.

Here’s an inconvenient truth… Life will go on, no matter how much we may try to snuff it out… And yes, even the flu bugs are life. Trying to snuff them out just ensures that the weaker strains fail while the real monsters grow stronger.

Yes, I know that the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, but we are to blame for this – and to be honest, if the H1N1 knocks off a bunch of people, it just helps the rest of us grow stronger.

Oh. My. God. Has Ryan given up on politics?

Well, in short, no. The problem is that politics raises my blood pressure, sends me into fits and generally drives me to want to hurt somebody. Yes, the current state of politics is sad at best, and lord knows we need all the help we can get… But the inane ramblings of one more pissed off libertarian in the blog world isn’t going to help matters. And yes, sadly I am pissed off and can no longer approach the topic of politics in any sort of a civil manner. Caveman style, maybe, but not civil. Not right now.

So, not wanting to give up on blogging, I’ve been pondering just what I can blog about that’s not completely asinine but not prone to making me want to go all incredible Hulk.

And then it hit me. What’s one of my top pet peeves right now? Wussies! Or more specifically, the wussification of America.

Wait, what?!

Wussification. You know, the deliberate drive to make everybody soft and shelter them from all of those things that are deemed “bad” or “immoral” by the neo-prudence movement.

Want to know what I’m talking about? Well, here’s a perfect example from yesterday’s paper:

Minnetonka Urges Anti-Grinding At School Dances

Ok, let’s get real for a minute here. We’ve all been kids and we’ve all danced in ways that made adults raised an eyebrow. But by and large I do believe that we turned out OK. We didn’t turn into freaky sex addicts because we squirmed around one another on the dance floor. Hell, I was in high school in the 90’s and believe me, dancing at our school was always a provocative affair.

Yet we survived. We had fun and enjoyed the frivolousness of our youth. And turned out just fine.

So now we fast forward to 2009, and in Minnetonka, MN they’re claiming that “They’re duplicating sexual acts. It’s suggestive sexually, and we’ve tried to calm that down.”

Neat. You know what I call this?

WUSSY!

Seriously, what are these people so afraid of? Sheltering our children is not only a pointless endeavor, it makes them WUSSIES!

UGH!

I think what really bothers me is that the wussies pushing for this sort of thing are simply trying to spread their wussiness and create a bunch of soft, feeble candyasses. I mean, listen to this:

Best said appropriate dancing and the push for that kind of dancing is necessary.

“We’ve had a problem over the last couple of years with kids grinding and doing some inappropriate things on the dance floor, and we just want to let the kids know we’re aware of it,” he said. “We want to make a safe, fun atmosphere for kids to have a dance.”

ARRRGG!

Ok, listen up all of you juvenile delinquents out there… Here’s my advice to you. Go out. Dance. Have fun. Grab some ass. Try and suck your partner’s brains out therough their mouth and maybe leave a hicky or two. And if anybody out there – whether some pansy adult or some puckered up kid in khaki chinos – tries to tell you that you have to calm it down and act “like your grandma is watching,” tell them to piss off and then tell them to talk to me. I’d be more than happy to straighten them out.

If you’ve ever watched the BBC show “Top Gear,” you’ll understand why this is so comical. Not only because the author has a knack for being blunt with the truth, but because the truth hits the goon squad right between the eyes…

`Possibly worst new car money can buy’

Our U.K columnist hates Insight’s CVT gearbox, and says Honda and the greenies get it all wrong
- Jeremy Clarkson

OXFORD, U.K.–Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called continuously variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s gas engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3L that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airplane. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 37 km/h because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

Because the Honda has two motors, one that runs on gas and one that runs on batteries, it is more expensive to make than a car that has one. But since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota’s Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief.

There’s more. Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons. This one, however, feels as if it’s been made from steel so thin you could read through it. And the seats, finished in pleblon, are designed specifically, it seems, to ruin your skeleton. This is hairy-shirted eco-ism at its very worst.

However, as a result of all this, prices start at $23,900 – that’s $5,300 or so less than the cost of the Prius. But at least with the Toyota there is no indication you’re driving a car with two motors. In the Insight, you are constantly reminded, not only by the idiotic dashboard, which shows leaves growing on a tree when you ease off the throttle (pass the sick bucket), but by the noise and the ride and the seats. And also by the hybrid system Honda has fitted.

In a Prius the electric motor can, though almost never does, power the car on its own. In the Honda the electric motor is designed to “assist” the gas engine, providing more get-up-and-go when the need arises. The net result is this: in a Prius, the transformation from electricity to gas is subtle. In the Honda, there are all sorts of jerks and clunks.

And for what? For sure, you could sip less than 5 L/100 km if you were careful. And that’s not bad for a spacious five-door hatchback. But for the same money, you could have a Golf diesel, which is even more economical. And hasn’t been built out of rice paper to keep costs down.

Of course, I am well aware that there are a great many people in the world who believe that the burning of fossil fuels will one day kill us all and that something must be done.

They will see the poor ride, the woeful performance, the awful noise and the spine-bending seats as a price worth paying. But what about the eco-cost of building the car in the first place?

Honda has produced a graph that seems to suggest that making the Insight is only marginally more energy-hungry than making a normal car. And that the slight difference is more than negated by the resultant fuel savings.

Hmmm. I would not accuse Honda of telling whoppers. That would be foolish. But I cannot see how making a car with two motors costs the same in terms of resources as making a car with one.

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a treehouse, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, back to you in Canada, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

Why doesn’t he just buy a Civic, which is made from local components, just down the road? No, really – weird-beards buy locally produced meat and vegetables for eco-reasons. So why not apply the same logic to cars?

At this point you will probably dismiss what I’m saying as the rantings of a petrolhead, and think that I have my head in the sand.

That’s not true. While I’ve yet to be convinced man’s contribution to the planet’s greenhouse gases affects the climate, I do recognize that oil is a finite resource and that as it becomes more scarce, the political ramifications could be dire. I, therefore, absolutely accept the urgent need for alternative fuels.

But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish. And that pure electric cars, such as the G-Wiz and the Tesla, don’t work at all because they are just too inconvenient.

Since about 1917, the car industry has not had a technological revolution – unlike, say, the world of communications or film. There has never been a 3G moment at Peugeot nor a need to embrace DVD at Nissan. There has been no VHS/Betamax battle between Fiat and Renault.

Carmakers, then, have had nearly a century to develop and hone the principles of suck, squeeze, bang, blow. And they have become very good at it.

But now comes the need to throw away the heart of the beast, the internal combustion engine, and start again. And here’s the kicker. That’s exactly what Honda has done with its other eco-car, the Clarity. Instead of using a gas engine to charge the electric motor’s batteries, as happens on the Insight, the Clarity uses hydrogen: the most abundant gas in the universe.

The only waste product is water. The car feels like a car. And, best of all, the power it produces is so enormous, it can be used by day to get you to 190 km/h and by night to run all the electrical appliances in your house. This is not science fiction. There is a fleet of Claritys running around California right now.

There are problems to be overcome. Making hydrogen is a fuel-eating process, and there is no infrastructure. But Alexander Fleming didn’t look at his mould and think, “Oh dear, no one will put that in their mouth,” and give up.

I would have hoped, therefore, that Honda had diverted every penny it had into making hydrogen work rather than stopping off on the way to make a half-arsed halfway house for fools and madmen.

The only hope I have is that there are enough fools and madmen out there who will buy an Insight to look sanctimonious outside the school gates. And that the cash this generates can be used to develop something a bit more constructive.

 Jeremy Clarkson is the host of Top Gear, seen Sundays on BBC

I accidentally happened upon the Huffington Post this morning. I say accidentally because I am usually so disgusted by the dredges that write there that I stay away in the name of good health. So when I clicked a headline that popped up in my Yahoo! news about why Annie Le’s killer shouldn’t have been arrested as a person of interest and was sent to Huffington, I was a bit shocked. Not surprised given the ludicrous content of the article, but I was torqued off to be on the site none-the-less.

So, what does one do when they unexpectedly find themselves in a place of evil? Well, look around a bit since it can easily be assumed that I won’t be returning to the site anytime soon, so I might as well snoop a bit now.

Click. Click. Click… I poke through the site. Read some articles, browse through the reader comments, read some of the author bios… And suddenly it clicks in my head… Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we rounded all of these people up in a big Starbucks or a Health Care Now rally, closed up the doors, and then gassed them until they stopped twitching… Or at a bare minimum gassed them until they stopped bitching.

Ok, so to be fair I do not fault the proprietors of Huffington or the people who write for them. People are allowed opinion and they are more than free to express it via a vacuous pit of a website like Huffington. Assuming they could keep their bitching and whining under control, I would probably spare them the gas on the grounds of free speach. But the people who not only read this dribble, but live it, breathe it and hang on every hateful words that drips from the pages of Huffington… These are the people who have got to go.

Oh, you know who I’m talking about. They have a bizzarre affection for bumper stickers. They’re the people who can’t help themselves and feel the odd compulsion to share with you what’s on their mind despite the fact that you don’t give a rat’s ass what they think or how psychotic their thoughts may be. They’re the people who for some reason think that they are your parents and have an unspoken divine right to micromanage your life via a nanny state. They’re the people who think that “going green” means making the rest of us as miserable as possible.

Well, you get the picture. You know the people I’m talking about.

So as I peruse the venom at Huffington, I’m thinking to myself that about 99% of the misery that plagues the average person these days stems from these freaks. Those of us who want nothing more than to live quietly and be left alone to pursue our own happy lives are constantly living under the sandal-clad feet of these people who are so damned miserable in their own skin that they can’t help but to try their hardest to share their misery with the rest of us. After all, if you ask these folks you will indeed find out that misery apparentlyu does love company. After all, if you can’t see happy people around you, you really can’t see how ugly and miserable your own life is.

So would the world really be a better place if these miserable souls were rounded up and put out of their collective misery? Oh, you bet it would! And better yet, it would also send a powerful message to all of those other aspiring bags of uncontrolled misery… ”Shut the hell up and leave us alone!”

OK, so rounding up all of the meddling busybodies and gassing them might be a bit extreme, but I’ll be damned if I can’t think of a better way to extricate them from our lives. I mean, they refuse to acknowledge reality (i.e. they adhere to the mantra of I believe what I’m told, not what I see), they refuse to leave well enough alone and they refuse to just shut up and confine their misery to their own lives…

But whatever, who am I to say? Just some crazy person who thinks he has a right to live and be left alone… Crazy!

Disclaimer: It’s called sarcasm. Consider this before losing your mind and assuming I am truly advocating for the mass killing of all of you idiots…

It’s not that I don’t care about the state of things, but I am also realistic and know that talking to my “humble” representative will result in nothing but frustration since Dave Obey doesn’t care about anythign that doesn’t directly benefit Dave Obey. So after giving it some thought, I came up with 10 things that would be more productive than talking to Dave Obey:

1. Trying to teach my cat theoretical physics
2. Counting ceiling tiles
3. Sorting M&M’s by weight
4. Unwinding a spool of thread and rewinding it the opposite direction
5. Researching the mating habits of trekkies
6. Rating cross-dressing Looney Tunes characters by order of sexiness
7. Memorize the hex codes for my favorite colors
8. Watch back to back soap operas until my eyes bleed
9. Read through my junk mail pile
10. Have a beer with with a fern and solve the world’s problems

In all seriousness, I have been considering backing out of politics as of late. Not because it’s not interesting, but because there are far more useful things I could be doing with my time. Like contemplating the finer points of kippered fish snacks and sardines. or maybe trying to balance dollops of soap suds on my cat’s head.

Strong words from somebody who normally enjoys standing on the soap box in the middle of the town’s square. But really, my throat is starting to hurt and I’m starting to think that this is what it felt like to my a dissident in the time of kings. I mean, the divide between the government and the governed is reaching that critical tipping point where the line suddenly shifts to kings and subjects… And at this point, you can shout all you want, but the only thing you’re going to do is give yourself a sore throat and possibly land yourself in jail for not being a good subject.

But getting back to the idea of “we must act now or all will be lost.” This is not my claim. I have a firm understanding as to the importance of acting deliberately and thoughtfully (i.e. not jumping in a panic). This is the call that is being sounded that will result in the tipping of America into a king/subject paradigm. It is being sounded by those people who will benefit from being kings and those people who are too terrified of their own lives to live for themselves and are looking forward to being ruled… And expediency is of the utmost importance because, much like physics, politics rely heavily on the laws of motion.

The push for “change” started during election season, and has since gained momentum… And like any other mass in motion, the more mass and acceleration it gains, the harder it’s going to be to stop (F=ma) since it takes a opposition of equal force to stop it and a a greater force to turn it back.

OK, I’m getting a bit nerdy here. Let’s break this down very simply. If those responsible for the drive change the landscape of this country can either a) increase it’s mass, or b) increase acceleration to build an overwhelming force. Since overall public support for their efforts is waning, the next best option to build force is to increase acceleration. In other words, the underlying goal is to overwhelm.

It has been asked why it is that there is such a hurry to get things done, and like so many of life’s problems the answer is very simple. Whether you choose to look at things mathematically, philosophically or put to song, the answer to this query remains the same: those in power are seeking more power and are actively working on overwhelming the entire system in the hopes that they will be able to take their thrones before the dust has a chance to settle.

They use ruses and smokescreens and false emergencies to obfuscate their intentions and build their momentum. After all, what better way to expedite a process than to scare the hell out of people and then claim if action isn’t taken now there will be dire and irreversible consequences? Need a real life example? Look at health care. They want the power, public support is falling, so to increase the force they’re trying to increase the speed at which things are happening by laying claim after claim regarding the consequences of not acting now. Remember… F=ma.

But the question that hangs precariously over health care is… Did the world end yesterday? We were told that not acting nowwould result in terrible consequences… But today came, and we’re all still here, and no terrible tragedies befell this nation. So which crises would have been averted had we acted yesterday at the behest of those who are telling us we must?

Need another example? Global warming. The speed at which action is being demanded is breathtaking but it’s still second to the amount of power those pushing the agenda stand to gain over us.

It’s all about power, and if we don’t slow things down and reduce the force being exerted upon us, I’m not sure we will be able to stop things from taking a terrible turn for the worst. But let’s not forget that this is not an insurmountable force nor is the king/subject paradigm a foregone conclusion. The only problem we face is an enemy that has a keen understanding that speed and mass will get them what they want, and are more than willing to lie, cheat and steal in their attempt to gain mass or speed.

So what can we do? Well, standing and preaching won’t do anything any more because they aren’t listening nor do they care about what we have to say. We can preach to the people but I think that we’re doing more harm than good by creating more dust for them to hide behind. There’s violence, which is a terrific equalizer where force is concerned, but do we really want to go there? The only thing we can do short of taking up arms is to peel away the two elements that make up political force. Peel off support and reduce mass, and do everything possible to slow things up hence reducing acceleration. Anything beyond that and you’re just making dust… And anything beyond that… Well, the consequences of violence are broad and should be considered only as a last resort.

It could equal 4. Or 3. Or maybe even 7. It’s all very straight forward, isn’t it? After all, what is reality if not what we are told it is?

Of course, I’m being facetious. Reality is an absolute. We know that 2+2=4 because it is mathematically provable. It is not relative to opinion nor is it debatable.

However, if somebody puts a gun to your head, you had better believe that you’re going to be more than willing to lay claim that 2+2= whatever the hell you’re being told to believe.

Over the years I have talked a great deal about the use of force. It can be used to achieve good or evil – it all depends on how it’s used. The interesting thing about force is that it is not a necessary tool for disseminating truth. Truth (reality) is simple and pure and universally accepted by all who acknowledge it. On the other hand, it takes force to deny truth or to get others to deny truth.  That’s why it takes the exertion of force in the form of violence to change the truth of 2+2=4 into a lie by claiming that 2+2=3.

So why bring this up? it sounds awfully philosophical, doesn’t it? Am I getting all Greek sandals and robes on you?

Hell no.

This idea of turning in your neighbor via the special White House email address thing has got me thinking. When is it, exactly, that the jackasses in the White House decided that they hold the monopoly on truth? Or, looking at it another way, they are in the business of telling people “don’t believe what you see with your own eyes, believe what we tell you.” The introduction of this turn in your neighbor bullcrap has added the “or else” to that statement, which is the application of force. After all, force doesn’t have to equate to violence. It can be fear or intimidation or coercion… Anything that drives people to act or think contrary to the truth is force… And we’re not talkin’ the force for good here either.

The Obama White House is playing a dangerous game here, and while I admire their chutzpahhere, I am also carefully watching what they’re doing since any time an authority uses force as an “or else” caveat to the “believe what we tell you” rhetoric, there big trouble on the way. And unfortunately, the general population of this country is getting caught up in the crocodile game. Oh, you’re not familiar with that one? Well, in short it’s the game where you feed the crocodile in the hopes that you will be eaten last (or not eaten at all). In this case, the White House is hoping that people will be willing to feed their neighbors to the crocodile…

But I digress. The question to ask is why the White House has felt the urge to use force in this situation. After all, if they’re telling the truth there would be no need to use force to bring people on board. Ah, but that’s just it, isn’t it. The very fact that force has been introduced into the equation is proof onto itself that we are not dealing in the truth here. It’s a catch 22 to the game, and once played it means all of the cards are out on the table. Enter force. Now that the cards are up, the people need to be controlled. The folks at the White House aren’t dummies. They know that their cards are showing, now it’s time to do some damage control… And what better way to do it than to get people to turn on each other? It’s a classic move really, and history is littered with similar moves made by less-than honest men.

So why do it? Control, presumably. After all, that’s what the White House has become all about. No longer is it the house of the people. It has become a beacon of fear. People fear their government because their government is using force to tell them that what they see is wrong but what they’re told is right. Not a pleasant situation to find onesself in, but sadly that has become the modus operendi.

But, why take my word for it? I’m just another voice telling you what to believe, right? or am I just telling you to follow your gut and defy what you’re being told? I guess that’s up to you to decide…

CSPI (yeah, you remember these nanny state buffoons, don’t you?) is at it again, this time going after Denny’s restaurants for supposedly having too much sodium in some of their meals.

So here’s wht our friends at the Center for Consumer Freedom have to say:

This just in: Eating is “dangerous.” At least, that’s what the Center for Science in the Public Interest is claiming in a new lawsuit against Denny’s restaurant. Time for an emergency reality check.

CSPI has a long history of filing media-stunt lawsuits. This time around, its activist leaders allege that the amount of sodium in Denny’s “Moons Over My Hammy” (and other menu items) violates New Jersey’s consumer protection statutes. The kicker? Even though CSPI claims that Denny’s is “misleading” consumers by not providing nutrition information on salt content, Denny’s readily provides the information not just online, but also in every one of its restaurants.

Here’s what we’re telling reporters today:

“Consumers, legislators, and others should take CSPI’s latest frivolous lawsuit with a grain of salt. Instead of clogging up our courts with baseless lawsuits, CSPI ought to focus on telling Americans where they can get useful information.”

I’ve addressed this before, but since it refuses to die I thought I would repost an article from today’s Center for Consumer Freedom newsletter:

As if money-hungry trial lawyers and the Center for Science in the Public Interest weren’t enough. This morning, the phony Cancer Project filed a lawsuit asking the court to require a cancer-risk warning label on all hot dog packages sold in New Jersey. There’s no beef to its cancer claims, of course, as the Associated Press and other media outlets pointed out during last year’s hot dog scare campaign. But just in case, we’re offering reporters a little reminder today.

As we’re telling the media, the Cancer Project is a deceptive spinoff of the woefully misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine – a group that is 96 percent free of actual doctors. And together they’re phonier than a tofu dog. 

From its creepy commercials to last year’s tasteless attempt to capitalize on the death of a former White House Press Secretary, PCRM and the Cancer Project will stop at nothing to scare Americans into a PETA-approved diet. Even if it means using our legal system as a tool for its fringe goals – and wasting taxpayers’ money in the process.