Incredulously,

Ragnar

With the money we are spending we could build coast to coast high speed railroads, develop a fleet of natural gas cars and trucks, hell we could build a tunnel to Brittan!  A new power transmission grid fed by new advanced nuclear reactors, all dangerous spent nuclear fuel should be safely buried a mile deep in solid bedrock below Nevada at Yucca Mountain.  We should be completely energy independent from the nuts in the Middle East.  Lets revitalize our steel industry.  A nation that doesn’t make its own steel is in decline.  Let’s measure this “great” administration’s success by how much they BUILD (lest Atlas shrugs and all the builders go away).   Crap, I’d settle for a fleet of Zeppelins!

First story:  The university is projecting over a billion dollar shortfall in their budget.  They are in the red by over a billion bucks!  Not good.  They cite budget trouble in Springfield, talk about probable tuition raises, cuts, etc.

Second story:  The university is building trans-gender bathrooms on campus.  How large a percentage of the student population are we catering to here?  Now as you all know I am a pretty simple guy, but have we developed a third sex or something that I am unaware of?  I really don’t get off the farm too often, but I thought that the way this thing worked was as follows:

1. Approach a restroom.
2. Look into your pants and determine the brand of tackle you are equipped with.
3. Following this self-examination you make a decision as to the little boys room or the little girls room.  There is no third choice.

Now if we were flush with money (bad pun) maybe ok, but we are a billion in the hole and are wasting money in the name of political correctness?  Is this really a necessity?

There are certain compromises that society dictates that frankly we are stuck with.  (like if you are a boy you go peepee in the boys room and if you are a girl you …..well you know.)  The system has really worked pretty well since the creation of indoor plumbing if you think about it.  I for one wish I could dress like a Spartan in the 300 (cool movie), flowing red cape and loin cloth, maybe strap AK-47s on my back, and partake in public fornication.  Unfortunately, societal norms frown on this type of public interaction.  Certainly my university does not fund the construction of special facilities to cater to my needs in this regard.  Most unfair it now seems.

Third Story:  Some University tenured professor feels the need to waste his tax-payer funded time applying for George Ryan to get a Nobel Peace prize for freeing all the murdering rapists (ok alleged murdering rapists – wait – Convicted murdering rapists) on Illinois’s death row.  Again, call me simple, but I thought we paid our professors to do things like TEACH.  If we are a billion in the hole and we have an overpaid liberal activist drawing professor pay – well I have a problem with this.

Summary:  We are over a billion dollars short on the budget but we have monies to build transgender potties and to pay a guy to promote giving an award to a convict.  Folks – something has got to give here.   All this in a half hour news segment.  It is just too much.

My daughter is 16 and a half.  Yesterday I grudgingly agreed to let her ride in a friend’s car to go to a matinee movie.  The thought scares me to death.  We home school her because I think that the philosophy of our small school is you are either an adored, pampered, athlete, or you are garbage that will probably end up bad and knocked up and on drugs, and a drop out. My daughter is not a jock, but she is damn good kid, she likes computers and anime and video games, and I just don’t want her in an environment that treats her as a second class citizen.  My wife went to a big school with something like a 5000 kid enrollment.  I used to think that would be bad, but I have changed my thinking on this.  The beauty of the big suburban school is that is seems like no matter what a kid is into, there is a peer group and a clique that shares the same interest.

She and her friends think I am an over-protective, paranoid, nut case (they are right – especially when it comes to my daughter.  In fact one could throw the word extremely in front of each of those descriptors without fear of excess)  Although compared to my neighbor I might not be the worst.  My neighbor told me his daughter was out in her boyfriend’s car, in the driveway, “talking” for a little too long after coming home from a date.  He put an end to the “talking” by walking out on his porch with his 12 gauge and letting one bang off up into the air.  Apparently this is an effective way to break up “talking” and send a young suitor packing.  I give it 9.8s for style points.

I have been thinking about why I am the way I am with my daughter.  I know she has to be given the freedom to grow.  Great advice a friend gave me is “you give them values and then you give them wings.”  Still it is a lot harder when you love them so much.

And compared to the stuff I was doing at her age……

When I was a little younger than my daughter I stole a neighbor’s car and drove myself and four buds a couple hundred miles to a Kiss concert.  It was an awesome all day concert with Foghat, Ted Nugent, (I think REO although the ole memory synapses are getting a little fuzzy) and Kiss was the headliner.  This was right after the release of their Kiss Alive double album and we had never seen anything like the makeup and pyro-boom booms and stuff.  What I remember of it was great.  We drove 80 mph plus, had a garbage bag of homegrown reefer (not a sandwich bag – a garbage bag – pounds of it that we carried into this football stadium that housed the event).  For those old enough to remember, we rolled joints out of Esmerelda papers, which were basically huge papers so you got a doobie about 6 inches long and ¾ inch around, and I don’t remember what all booze other than there were lots of empties flying out of the window as we zoomed down the highway.  Seatbelts – please – for pussies; airbags, never heard of them.  Insurance – ah well not really.  And oh yeah, there was a riot and police action at the concert.

Although I don’t remember too much about the bands, one incident from that day remains etched in my mind.  Every color, sound, and smell. At the open end of the stadium where the stage was, there was a break or opening for a vehicle entrance.  The field was standing room only and the stands were pretty well full.  It was between bands and we had climbed into the stands to sit with one of my pal’s brother and his girl.  It was a gorgeous summer day, sun shining down.  The crowd was starting to make rumblings about all of the police accumulating outside the stadium, but we were not too concerned about anything other than the bathroom lines at that point in the day.  Then we became aware of a commotion on the other side of the arena.  This guy was hanging over the wall by the vehicle entrance, about halfway up in the stands.  He was screaming and flipping off someone we could not see but we got the idea who it was.  We could hear him screaming “F*** You Pigs!”  and other niceties at someone on the outside.  He was really animated, just gong crazy screaming and waving the finger – both hands.  Then he made his mistake.  He ran and grabbed an armful of beers or sodas or cans of something and started throwing them over the wall at whoever he was yelling at.  He threw about half a dozen, really putting his arm into the throws.  We had a perfect view of all of this and were watching through a haze of pot smoke floating over the field and it all seemed pretty entertaining and kind of somewhere between a tv show and reality.  Suddenly this guy stops throwing and takes off running.  All I can surmise is that he must have beaned somebody pretty good because a second later a wall of police just exploded through the gate chasing this guy.  They rolled into the stadium like a killer tsunami wave of cops.  Just boiled into the infield and they were all looking for this guy.  I do not think they were trying to just catch him, they were pissed, they were going to kill him.  And worse and so obvious to the thousands of stoners watching all of this, the guy was running up the bleachers.  The problem with running up is eventually you get to the top and then you are faced with two possible courses of action, and neither is real good.  Take a big next step over the top, hoping to discover you have the ability to fly, or probably be beat to death by the cops chasing you.

And boy they wanted him bad!  They were literally grasping and diving for this guy and missing by inches, knocking hell out of all the people sitting in the stands and trying to get out of the way.  The guy was running through the crowd on the tops of bleachers, clearly buzzed out of his head, but just gliding past everyone like he was Teflon.  One stumble and he was burnt toast.  Nightsticked, Sapped, beaten and kicked, burnt toast.  I remember thinking that there was no way anyone could run broken field like that, up the stands, over people, over coolers and bags and purses, and drinks and junk, on a dead run, and not take a header.   Heck, I was having trouble walking on the bleachers without falling, but adrenaline is a great thing.  Just as they were ready to nail him, literally in their grasp, no possible escape, this guy made a cut back down the bleachers.  He made a cut that not one person in a hundred thousand could have made; He made an open-field missed-tackle cut that would make an ESPN highlight reel of the best halfback cuts of all time, a Gayle Sayers at the peak of his career cut.  Except this guy was running through a crowd on the tops of bleachers and running for his life.  A half a dozen cops made flying tackles of thin air and this guy ran back down the bleachers full speed untouched and into the crowd in the infield.  From our seats we could see the crowd part for the guy like the red sea and then close back in.  The last I saw of the guy he threw off his shirt and disappeared into the mass of people down there.  I think he got away.   The police presence was a little more apparent after this.

That was some day.  So I look back on that now and realize how by much I beat the odds.

Of the four other guys with me that day, one I have lost track of.  The last I heard he was doing ok but has left a trail of illegitimate kids and divorces.  One guy was murdered when he was about 21.  One guy is a habitual criminal and has spend half his life in prison, and the other guy we are not sure; he is either dead, on the run, or in a witness protection.  I have heard all three theories.  And somehow, I am an engineer with a security clearance and a 6-figure income.  How the hell did that happen?

And she wonders why I am a paranoid, over-protective, psycho Dad?

I am talking about one of the most maligned players in recent memory, probably since Andy Kaufmann (although that is where the comparison ends,) Chester.  Yeah, Chester.

Chester – the guy we have all screamed at on the TV; the guy we have cussed, bemoaned, and ridiculed.   The guy that has been booed on his own court – booed by us, us so called bleed-orange-and-blue Illini fans.

Let us review what we have said over the years:

Wasted scholarship, no handles, can’t shoot, no court vision, terrible free throw shooter, offensive liability, like playing four against five, why does Weber stick with this guy?  I could go on.

How many guys would have quit, just packed it in, said hell with it?  How many “stars” have we had who sat out for weeks every time they tweaked a muscle or got a pinky boo boo, whose off court behavior let the entire university down, who broke their word and jumped to greener pastures while looking out for number one?  Well, not Chester.  Chester kept working.  Chester busted his butt in practice.  He played with injuries that others would have probably taken medical redshirts for.  Why does Weber stick with him?  Because Weber is a heck of a lot better judge of a player than any of us, because he saw something in Chester that is worth more than a 48 inch vertical or a deadeye from the three point line.

I saw a glimmer of it last year during the introductions for the Indiana game.  Eric Gordon came to town, the all-American future NBA star, the guy with bars of gold for talent and rusted tin cans for character.  Chester met him on the court and gave him a chest bump.  It wasn’t a, “Hi pal let’s have a fun game,” little bump.  It was a full on, “Game on Chump, You are in our house now,” nuclear whollop Chest BOOM.  It was way cool, and it psyched out Mr. Gordon.  He was rattled and punked.  Remember the timing of it.  This was before the bottom fell out and the NCAA was forced by overwhelming evidence to admit just how dirty a once great Indiana program had become in their quest for a championship run.   Remember how sports reporters called it excessive and an attack.  ESPN called it dirty and said Chester should be suspended for flagrant something, flagrant anything.  An Illini bum just couldn’t treat one of the golden boys that way.  BUT I called it leadership.  It wasn’t a cheap shot.  It was a man-to-man, I-am- in-your-face, message that we were not backing down and we were pissed.  That is when I saw a glimmer of something more.  Gordon was never the same.  Sure they won because Pruitt was a brick-throwing loser from the free throw line.  But the guy I say won the most was Chester.  He became the team’s leader that day.

Fast forward to the present day.  Chester has a new do.  He said he cut his hair because he didn’t want to look like a thug when he represented his school.  What?  Wow!  How often do you hear that from an athelete in any sport?  Guess what?  Chester is better.  Way better.  In fact I will go this far. Chet is the most valuable point guard in the Big Ten.  Nobody does more for his team.  Nobody has more heart.  And nobody makes me prouder of the job our school does in developing young men to make a positive contribution to society.  I am damn proud Chester is an Illini.

He talked about a guy named Jim, who was in the middle of the WW2 Allied beachhead landing in Italy, with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, during Operation Shingle, at Anzio.

He was the tallest guy in his company, 6’7”, so his sergeant ordered him to jump out of the landing craft first because he would have the least chance of drowning.  (Doesn’t that sound like a good time.)  Once they took the beach, Jim was given the mission to capture a farmhouse where a German machinegun nest was set up.  Following hand to hand combat, hand grenades, mortar shells blowing up all around, and lots of stuff that is a hell of lot more fun to watch in a movie than to really do, Jim succeeded in taking the gun (by which we mean killing all the Germans), but was then hit in the leg by a machine gun bullet.  The force of the bullet knocked him into an icy creek, where he lay for 18 hours before being found.  The bones in his leg were shattered.  His recovery in military hospitals took a year, and he always afterward walked with a pronounced, and famous, limp.

Needed to stand on a box to climb on his horse.

If you haven’t figured it out, the guy was James “Jim” Arness, or Matt Freakin Dillon, for those of us who grew up watching Gunsmoke.  This is the guy who shot a bad guy in the OPENING CREDITS of his show each week, How cool was that! (well at least until it became a little too non-PC).  But let me tell you, that was tame stuff compared to the account of what he actually did in Anzio.  The Paul Harvey segment stirred my interest, so I read the full account of his actions on the net, and I highly recommend it to everyone.  It is un-freakin-believeable.  If you think he played a badass on TV (and I surely do) it was nothing compared to what he did for real.

His military awards and medals include: the Bronze Star; the Purple Heart; the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three bronze campaign stars; the World War II Victory Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge.

All this got me to thinking about the difference in Hollywood stars from my childhood and the pretenders we have today.  Back then, it seems Hollywood took American heroes and made them stars, guys like Audie Murphy and Lee Marvin.  Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, they were big stars when they enlisted, and Stewart in particular flew bomber missions, something that took so much balls I can’t even imagine it.  Their service to their country reads like their movies, but more spectacular.

Today we make stars out of America-hating punks like Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin, or  morons like Joy whoever-her-dumb-ass-is on the View, or Sean Combs.  We have a society where being a patriot is likened to being a redneck moron – Where are the heroes?  My generation had heroes to look up to, guys like US Marshal Matt Dillon of Dodge City, but somehow we failed to raise a new generation of them.  How was our parenting so flawed?  Why does Hollywood no longer make Stars out of real life heroes?  Why did we choose to “tune it, drop out, and get high” instead of being heroes to our kids like our folks were heroes to us?  I wonder if Jim would say it was worth it?

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

With these words Justice Antonin Scalia just saved our country.

A few years ago I had the pleasure to work with a gentleman from the south who had the clearest explanation of why the 2^nd Amendment was written that I ever heard. He said this: “ The 2^nd Amendment ain’t about duck huntin; it is about making sure the nobody takes the pitchforks away from the Serfs so they can’t storm the castle if things get too bad.”

Justice Scalia said the same thing a little more eloquently:

The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.

The 2^nd Amendment is why we are a free country. It is why we are free men and not subjects. Hitler knew that his first step in establishing his Reich had to be banning individual gun ownership, so he did. The Japanese feared attacking our western coast because they knew there was an armed man behind every bush and tree. Today the United Nations pushes for global disarmament of the World population, and as it has since it was formed, America stands as a beacon of freedom against such repression. And we will continue to do so as one of my heroes said, “until they pry our guns from our cold, dead, fingers.”

A man wrote the words, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” He must have agonized over every sylable to make sure it was perfectly clear, to make sure that it could not be twisted, or misused, or read to mean anything other than exactly what it said.

Could he have ever imagined that 200 years later the highest court would have to issue rulings to explain the meaning of clear English usage, that four ninths of the court would be so lost in a Socialist/Marxist haze that they would argue the words had double meaning and a more subtle intent lost on the common man they were were written to serve? Would he be proud that the country he worked to build from a dream would still exist, or would he be shocked to think the rights he risked his life and family for, that so many men have bled for, would have slipped so close to the precipice? To within one judge’s opinion of being lost forever.

The other thought my Southern friend told me is this, “Once you give up your rights, or let some carpet-bagger take em away, they’s awful hard to get back.”

Josh’s friend said this decision will benefit Democrats. He is only half correct. It benefits all Americans. On behalf of my children, Thank you Justice Roberts, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Scalia.

Sometimes because of his human failings he needed his friends to prop him up, even to the point of his pal Jim Rhodes putting on the armor and assuming the role for a couple of times. Also, the artists hit a homer with the crimson and gold avenger design. His armor just looked so cool.

So to the film. I took the two best critics I know, my wife and daughter. The daughter knew the storyline a little, and the wife not at all.

Bottom line, we were all three blown away and loved the movie. Visually and effects-wise it is amazing. Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic as Tony Stark. His chemistry with his secretary Pepper Potts (Paltrow) is smoking hot. There are lots of funny bits along the way as he designs his armor and works the bugs out of it. My daughter said it was by far the best superhero movie she has seen (and she has seen them all). My wife thought it was great and actually wooo-hooo’d out loud a couple of times. And it is pretty hard to make her go wooo-hoooo.

But by far the best part of the movie, and something that I hope indicates that learning has finally occurred, is the movie stays true to the original story. OK, they modernized it a bit, but they recognized that the original story is great and they told it. Unlike the last X-men movie (what the hell was that) and don’t even get me started on the Hulk. These old Marvel plotlines are so good just tell them and you will have a hit.

So Ragnar says enjoy, two thumbs way freakin’ up, 5 stars, two snaps and a shaboom, whatever you want. What they do to the Shelby Cobra is wrong, but funny. And if you haven’t heard it a thousand times by now, stick around for the spoiler after the credits.

Anyway, here is the profound thought. What is the basis of the Robin Hood story? It is that the government raised taxes on the serfs and villagers and freemen until the economy stifled and eventually the people revolted. Classic civil disobedience.

Think about that. The government raised taxes, and it hurt the economy. Doesn’t that fly in the face of democratic policy? But Ragnar you say, Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. That is classic democratic platform stuff. The evil corporate monarchs robbing from the downtrodden, violating the land, persecuting the poor working man.

Well yes, but that is not really what was happening. Just like today, where the Democrats are funded by the nobility of our country, the movie stars and George Soros’s of the world, so to were the nobles of Robin Hood’s time raising taxes to fund their pet policies. They knew how to spend the peoples’ money much better than the people did. That part hasn’t changed, it is really the working man trying to make the village prosper who is going to get the tax hike. OK maybe not the guy working at the corner deli, but certainly the engineers, doctors, accountants, and people with the audacity to knock out more than a hundred K a year or so. These are the “rich” the democrats are going to tax today. Going back to Robin Hood times, it would be the masons, the brewmasters, the smithies, and the scribes. They were taxed by Good Prince John until they couldn’t afford their apprentices, they had no profit, could not reinvest in the local economy, and so on until things got so bad everyone starved. Those were the people Robin Hood was giving back to. In his own way Robin Hood was cutting taxes.

Robin Hoods’ people didn’t want government funded medical care, or amnesty for the French sneaking into the country illegally, or the government banning their pitchforks. They wanted government out of their lives so that they could pursue happiness – there’s a concept……………………….And Robin Hood did what he could to facilitate that desire, George Bush tax cuts at the point of a sword.

How could this be, this concept that young children are learning from this tale, that taxation leads to poverty and economic stagnation? That getting some of your taxable income back helps you be happy? What? We can’t tell kids this kind of thing anymore. Think of how much public school programming is required to get that idea out of their heads. Memo to the DNC. A revision to the Robin Hood tale is long overdue. Maybe we could rewrite it to say that Prince John reversed the egregious tax cuts of King Richard to ensure everyone pays their fair share. Robin Hood could rob from those businessmen who tried to hide their profit from the government and he could give their money (excuse me the government’s money) back to Prince John because he would know how to better spend it. Yeah this is getting better, and we could add a gay character, Little John or Maid Marian –scratch that – Will Scarlet, and of course we could portray Friar Tuck as a corrupt pedophile and get a good slam in on religion, especially Catholics……OK I think we can salvage this.

Ragnar

The last Literature class I had, about 20 years ago, included a short story about a society that sought to equalize its population’s physical capability by penalizing those who were overachievers. I forget the name of the story, but the idea was that if you were too tall, or too strong, too fast, etc. they would hang weights all over you so that your physical capability fell in line with the norm. They strove for mediocrity. I think that is the concept of socialized anything all in a nutshell. You strive for mediocrity because you remove the incentive to excel.

One of my relatives, a rather brilliant surgeon I am led to believe, tells me that every bill he submits to insurance is returned as, “beyond reasonable and customary.” It doesn’t seem to matter that his fees are in line with all the other surgeons in this part of the state.

Imagine if you went to the dealership with your car for a new head gasket, and when presented the bill, you just refuse to pay 70% of it. “Nope, above what my market study shows as reasonable and customary. Sorry, my market study is confidential.”

If you did that, and the dealership let you get away with it, I would imagine the quality of the repair work you received would begin to erode. Maybe the more skilled mechanics would no longer get the pay they now get and would decide to move to more lucrative ventures. Now imagine if the government ran all of the medical industry this way. You just might not get as great a job on your quindoubletriple bypass anymore. The brilliant, genius-level IQ, over-achieving, never-got-anything-but-an-A-in-their-life, people who entered medicine because they wanted to help people AND because they thought it would be cool to get a big return on their 10 years of college studying their arses off, followed by two years working 24 hour shifts as an intern, so that maybe just maybe they could make a butt-ton of money and live the American dream, well these people may decide to go somewhere else, to seek a more lucrative venture. And you know what? Some of them are smart enough to do it. To steal an analogy from the title of one of the greatest books ever written; “What if Atlas Shrugged?”

I think that is the inevitable result of socialized medicine, or socialized anything. The best people will leave because the incentive to stay will disappear, bureaucrats will muddle everything up, and the quality the consumer receives will suffer. The data is so overwhelming that you have to try really hard to ignore it, (kind of like the failure of gun control – sorry, had to work that in somewhere) and yet, my less-favorite political party is making it the center plank of their platform. I don’t get it. I guess the idea just seems so attractive that they cannot stop dreaming of making it work. It seems so perfect, it just has to work. Doesn’t work in the UK, doesn’t work in Canada, Michael Moore thinks it works in Cuba, which is about as likely as planting a horse-apple and expecting to grow a horse apple tree. But it just has to work. The government will provide for everyone, and nobody will be sick, and everyone will be happy, and everyone will be able to run as fast as everyone else, and the world will be a better place…sigh, utopia.

So here is the profound thought: “Socialism is like a perpetual motion machine; It would be the greatest thing ever, except it just doesn’t work. People never stop trying to reinvent it because it would be so great, but it just never works.”

Wow, here gim’me back my beer.