An outstanding commercial for Concealed Handgun License classes.

I may just have to travel to see this guy when my renewal is up.

This is about the best ending to a CHL or self-defense commercial I've ever heard. Of course, it was sent to me by one of my cousins who is every bit as much of a red-blooded, patriotic, Tea Party supporting Texan as myself.

God Bless Texas.

If you don't like it here in America, get the hell out.

Let's clarify a few things.

I'm a proud United States Air Force veteran. I'm a proud former federal lawman. The overwhelming majority of men in my family are veterans and many have also served in law enforcement.

All of us, without fail, have bled for our country. Some of our men didn't come home from their tours of duty.

And now I read about this pathetic excuse of an Air Force veteran, Haley Sides, who's pissed off because her kindergarten-aged girl's school has the kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning.

She's a veteran and she's pissed about this?

She's pissed because she thinks the emphasis should be on multiculturalism and globalism, not on the pride of one's country. However, I see that she laid aside those beliefs while taking GI Bill money to complete a four-year college education.

Message to Haley Sides: Get the fuck out of our country. Leave your little girl. We'll raise her and take care of her. You are unfit to be a parent.

Don't worry. We won't "indoctrinate" your daughter, but we will teach her that everything in her future is a direct result of the very country her sperm-receptacle birther despises so much.

We'll teach her that in almost no other country in the very global community her sperm-receptacle so adores would tolerate the insolence and defiance that she is free to practice here.

We'll also teach her that it's possible for one to wear the uniform of the greatest nation on earth and still manage to defile it and everything it stands for--just as a handful of others have done in the recent past, including Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo who plotted to kill his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, and Maj. Hasan who DID kill fellow soldiers at the post. And of course, there's Pfc. Bradley E. Manning who gave over tens of thousands of classified documents to the Wikileaks pukes.

Unfortunately, we'll have to teach the little girl that her sperm-receptacle birth-mother hates the very country that made everything possible for her.

And to Ms. Sides: Be glad, very glad, that my time in the Air Force was well before yours.

In reading the comments of the story, I see a number of people who it is probably best that our paths never cross. These are the same people born of the generation of those who spat upon us in airports and bus stations.

And to those misguided punks and punkettes who make such comments and who are stinking up the air and parks at their Occupy Whatever protests and who are openly wishing for "violent revolution," understand this--

You do not want violent revolution. You do not want the fury, anger and pent-up resentment of twenty-million veterans waking up and coming down on you like the fist of God Himself in defense of our country.

But, if that is what you truly think you want, then enough with the tough talk. Let's get the dance going.

Because for me, I'm tired of the domestic enemy fringe continuously pecking away at our freedoms, our rights and our way of life.

If you don't like it here, leave. It's that simple.

Extreme couponers. Extreme annoyances.

I use the word annoyance because I try hard not to use the word asshole in a headline.

But that's what extreme couponers are--extreme assholes.

Once again I was at a local chain drug store on my way home and got caught behind the stereotypical wide-assed, stretch-pants wearing extreme couponer who was there with her mom/aunt/sister/neighbor/lover/whoever and they were each grunting and sweating as they removed scads of items from their shopping carts and plopped them down in front of the poor cashier.

You could tell by the look in the eyes of the high-school aged cashier that she'd seen this kind of crap way too often.

Then the two women began doling out their cart load of merchandise into separate transactions so they could get some sort of rewards along with the coupons they used.

My temper was soaring and there were no other cashiers or clerks around, as is typical with this chain drug store--and one that I now absolutely refuse to ever do business with again unless it is to take a leak in their parking lot.

Several transactions through, one of the hippos turned around and looked me, smiled and said, "We're a couple of extreme couponers."

"No," I replied. "You're a couple of extreme assholes."

For some reason, both women got offended and starting bleating and mooing about my rudeness. Problem was, they hadn't even began to see "rude" from me.  I used some of my best sergeant's vernacular on those two.

It finally brought out the manager, who I went up one side and down the other on for A) allowing these endless multiple transactions while B) not having another clerk to ring up the honest customers. This poor manager shrugs and says that "corporate" insists on catering to these coupon scamming people.

In disgust, I leave my items on the counter and walk out, as do the other four customers behind me. The two coupon cows continue sweating and grunting and raising hell with the poor cashier over which coupons they can use for which and for how much.

Hey retail corporate numbnuts? How about a checkout lane for couponers only, and then checkout lanes for the rest of us honest shoppers?

When I say "honest," I mean those customers who are not trying to game the system or wipe out shelves or who buy forty years worth of toilet paper and toothbrushes that they'll never use.

I get home and tell the wife about it. She tells me horror stories of extreme couponers. Stories of people who buy their own cash registers so they can print out forged receipts for rebates. Couponers who send their kids dumpster-diving for discarded newspapers just for the coupons.

WTF?

My neighbor showed me some pictures she snapped with her iPhone of some extreme couponers shopping in a grocery store. They had their freaking iPad laid out on a portable desktop along with binders and a portable, wireless PRINTER for crying out loud, to print out coupons on things they saw!

How would you like to get behind THOSE inconsiderate assholes in the checkout line?

I'd get arrested.

A growing number of these extreme idiots are using the manufacturer and retailer coupons to stockpile massive quantities of merchandise like razors, toothbrushes, vitamins, etc, then they (re)sell it to flea markets, on Craig's List and Ebay, while some wholesale it out to locally owned convenience stores.

Worse yet, it seems that Indian and Asian owned convenience stores are using this extreme couponing to literally stock their shelves for virtually free. If you've ever walked into one of these places, you know the merchandise is marked up sky high. And finally, adding insult to injury, if the merchandise doesn't sell, these asshole store owners simply return it to the retailer for store credit.

Welcome to America.

If there's any good news to this madness it's that a growing number of retailers are starting to get smart and put limits on this extreme bullshit. Rite Aid and Target and Publix have said "no more."

No more multiple transactions. No more "stacking" coupons which I found out is using multiple coupons for the same item to not only get it free, but get a friggin' reward coupon for anywhere from a dollar to five dollars off the next purchase.

Good for you, Target. You just got some of my business. If there were Rite Aids here in Texas, you'd DAMN SURE have my business. Fortunately, the guy who runs the grocery store where we shop doesn't allow this extreme coupon shelf-clearing, multiple-transaction madness to occur in his store.

We spend copious amounts of money in his store to show my gratitude.

Walmart, the great crack whore of retailers, is now apparently accepting anything that even resembles a coupon. I think maybe I'll get a Crayon and some construction paper and write "Save $500 on any big flat screen television" and see if they'll take it.

According to the extreme couponers, all you have to do is "Stand your ground, don't back down, wear them down." This catchy little phrase was actually taken from one of the extreme asshole's websites, believe it or not.

Better yet, though, I think I'll just shop more online.

Screw the retailers.

A preview of Armageddon came to Lubbock, Texas.

I went to high school in Lubbock, then after getting out of the service, returned to attend Texas Tech University.

Been gone now for almost two decades, but still return to visit friends and family at least once every year to two.

West Texas has some of the most awe-inspiring weather you'll ever see.

In college, we used to chase tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in our photojournalism class. This was circa-1980s before The Weather Channel and reality TV. Just some crazy college students with their Minoltas and Nikons.

I've seen it blow dirt and snow not just on the same day, but in the same hour. I've seen it lightning during a blizzard. I've seen the asphalt streets melt when the temps exceeded 115F.

But I've never seen anything like this. Keep in mind that this happened around 5:30 p.m. When the dust hits, it looks like the middle of the night in some places.

Enjoy.

Bachmann is toast, Huntsman a bowel movement.

Political Darwinism is alive and well in the ranks of the GOP debate contenders.

The two front runners, Slick Mitt and Governor Rick Perry, failed miserably Tuesday night. Bachmann once again proved she isn't fit to be taken serious as a presidential contender.

Good. They needed to. We don't need a career politician in Washington. We need someone who actually knows what the hell it's like to live in the real world where other people's hard earned dollars are spent on goods, wares and services to support their own well-being.

Instead, we saw a lineup of political leeches, all of whom are career politicians with the exception of Herman Cain.

Because Cain continues to resonate solidly with everyday Americans, the politicians on stage couldn't handle that. So the politicians do what they do best when confronted with facts that expose their phony "plans" and "ideas."

They attack.

Michele Bachmann will be damned lucky to even retain her own House seat in Minnesota come next November, let alone have any hopes at all for being on the GOP ticket. She is quickly proving herself to be the GOP moonbat equivalent of the dopehead that California elected to its governorship.

"If you turn 9-9-9 upside down, it becomes 6-6-6," Bachmann shrilled.

Wow. Hold me back. Cleverness of the which never seen before.

But if you notice, the once darling but now moonbat of the Tea Party has no plan of her own that is even close to viable. Instead, she simply attacks.

Message to Bachmann from America--we're tired of this crap. Offer us solutions, not the same old political BS.

Huntsman? You're little more than just another idiot who's clinging to the corner of the stage in hopes you might be able to write a book someday about your run for the presidency.

You thought 9-9-9 was the price of a pizza? Ha ha. Hilarious. Your sense of humor is right there with your sense of economic credibility.

And as typical, you're running on your daddy's coattails since he was the big business guy and you inherited everything you have.

Translation? Huntsman is just another limousine liberal disguised as a RINO.

When career politicians with unlimited funds and resources all turn their attacks towards the only non-politician on stage, yet can offer no significant accomplishments of THEIR OWN, that should tell you something about the sorry-assed state of affairs not just in the GOP, but in the USA as well.

Next November, the best thing we can do for this country is to flush every damned politician who's served over two terms straight down the toilet.

Hey, Steny Hoyer--Kiss my red, white and blue ass.

News flash.

The problems in America are your fault. You, the registered voter. Because you dared register, and you dared vote this past November 2010 election.

So says chief asshat Steny Hoyer, House minority whip.

These damned Democrats. . . Everytime I think they've run out of people to blame for their miserable failings, they surprise me once again.

Now the failings of Congress are OUR fault? Because we dared vote in REPRESENTATIVES (look that word up, Stoyer) who would actually *gasp* vote in a way that represented OUR VIEWS?

And this pisses off Steny Hoyer.

Hoyer has to go in 2012.

Chris Christie. Fraud extraordinaire.

You know? Several years ago when Christie was elected governor of New Jersey, I was pretty happy.

Not that I held out much hope for New Jersey, but rather that the stinking Democrats had lost and lost big--and Christie was part of that.

But as is typical of blowhard asshats like Christie, once in power (note I didn't mistakenly use the word "office" but rather "power"), they revert to the power-hungry simpletons they are.

Witness Christie's endorsement of Slick Mitt (Romney) less than ninety minutes ago as of this writing.

That's right, New Jersey's highly-touted "Oh-my-God-we-need-him-for-president" buffoon is endorsing the MOST liberal candidate in the GOP field (to date).

Christie also demanded that Rick Perry "repudiate" statements made by a Dallas Baptist preacher calling Mormonism a cult. Perry refused.

Good for Rick Perry. I would have told Chris Christie to go to hell and kiss my ass on the way. Who the hell does he think he is demanding that anyone do anything?

Of course, this is the same fraud who also appointed a Muslim judge, then called anyone and everyone who disagreed with it a "bunch of crazies."

It's a mess in the GOP field right now, to be sure, but at least we're starting to figure out who the phonies and loonies are.

I was on the wagon for Herman Cain very early on, but stepped off when he stated that the Second Amendment was a "state's right" issue. The hell it is. But I'm forgiving Herman Cain because he is NOT a politician and he can (hopefully)/will appoint the correct people in the correct positions who understand these things.

I hope Herman cleans up the floor tonight with Slick Mitt.

Which one is the Canadian?

Seems there has been some careful study of the "Which one is the blonde?" posting.

I can see why--I missed it myself. More than once.

Digging through some old e-mails from the agency days, I found this one. And while I'm sure it's been around, beauty never goes out of style--or favor.

So, study this carefully and see if you can spot which one is the Canadian.

OK men, can your woman do this?

I hear about women doing yoga (my wife does) and tai chi (my mom does) and I see suburban nouveau riche women sending their little girls into dance and ballet and gymnastics.

But, can your woman do this?

If she can't, ask her why the hell not.

Then enjoy the couch, boys.

Guns Up! Two great gun videos

In the first one, this is either the dumbest SOB on the planet, or the luckiest.

And this next one is just perfect. Maybe South Africa is on to something?

It's Texas/OU weekend and Texas A&M/Texas Tech weekend. UT/OU at lunch, A&M/Tech in the evening.

Yeah, I'm a Texas Tech guy. Undergraduate and graduate school alumnus. How can you not like a school whose motto is "Guns Up!"

It's gonna be a helluva Saturday.

Hopefully.

My Apple is crying today.

We lost an icon. A true, genuine American icon.

Whether you liked him, hated him or just ignored him, you cannot naysay the impact he made on certain segments of our life.

I remember when Apple launched the Macintosh. I remember a year or so later, sitting in the basement of the University Center at Texas Tech University and getting a "Welcome to Macintosh" tour.

That was the neatest damn computer I had ever seen, and I knew then I had to have one.

At the time, it was cost prohibitive for a full-time college student going to school on a GI bill plus working two jobs, sometimes three. The computer geeks were lining up to use the DOS machines at the UC at Tech--and carrying around their huge floppy disks. That meant that there almost never any waiting to get on one of the new Macs that the geeks all said "were just a fad and would never go anywhere."

I was not then, and am not now, in the "geek" mentality or crowd. In fact, I've always waited for several generations of "new" technology to make its way into the consumer market before purchasing an earlier version of that same technology.

Several years after graduating from college, I met my wife-to-be, married her, resigned from the federal law enforcement agency I was with and enrolled full-time in graduate school. That first semester, I purchased my very first Macintosh. It was a Mac Classic II, and at the time, one of the most powerful machines built.

It had a staggering 80mb hard drive and an incredible 128k memory. You could hook it up to a modem and get on computer bulletin boards (as they were called then), you could send and receive faxes through it and you could even hook up external speakers. I also bought an Apple Personal LaserWriter.

I was in absolute hog heaven.

We still have that Mac Classic II in its original box up in our attic and it still looks as new today as the day I bought it.

The LaserWriter gave us almost ten years of use before it decided one day that it'd had enough. We replaced it with another (used) Apple laser printer that we still have and use today. (We have two other printers in our home network that are on the wireless, both laser printers plus an ink-jet printer--none of which are Apple.)

Since then, I've had an Mac LC, three Quadras, five laptops, a G3 and a G4--which I still have and use pretty much only for Photoshop and Quark Xpress.

For our present Apple machines, we have the Apple Airport Extreme (wireless base station), Apple Time Capsule. Our present computers that are our "daily drivers" consist of my beloved G3 Wall Street PowerBook--which to date has THE best damned keyboard of any computer I've ever owned or worked on. The PowerBook G4 12" is the perfect size for my flight bag and goes everywhere with us in the Cessna, not to mention to coffee shops and libraries and book stores where there is WiFi. Upstairs in our office, we have the big iMac G5 with the huge screen and built-in camera and all that jazz.

I still don't know how to use half the stuff that machine has on it, but as full-time retirement looms closer, some friends of ours have figured out this video on the internet while you talk stuff, and we're game.

We don't have an iPad because we want to wait for at least two generations to come out, maybe a third. I like this second generation iPad and I'm tempted, but right now I don't really have time to take advantage of an iPad. We also want to wait and see what the future of eBooks will be and in whose format will there be the most books (Kindle, Nook, iPad, et al).

iPhone? I hate cell phones. However, Jobs and Apple revolutionized another market. iPods, same thing. Apple TV was an early front-runner, now there are a host of boxes out there.

I also remember scrimping and saving so I could purchase some Apple stock when it was made public while I was in the Air Force. I think I paid something like $3.50 a share for it. Kept buying it while in college when I could afford it, and continued buying afterwards. I never sold it and now it's worth something like $395 a share. Maybe it's time.

So like him or not, like the company or not, there is no disputing that Steve Jobs and Apple have made a tremendous impact on our society and our nation.

Rest in Peace, Steve.

ESPN is now blocked on our television remotes.

Maybe you haven't heard, but Hank Williams, Jr., a great American, made some unflattering remarks about the Kenyan imposter.

Remarks, I might add, that are almost verbatim what the liberal rats at ESPN and other media darlings said about George W. Bush during his two terms.

Difference is, Hank gets his opening theme music pulled from the Monday Night Football show on ESPN.

Fine by me. Screw ESPN. We just sent them a short, testy e-mail explaining why every television set in our household has every ESPN channel blocked--we don't even want to accidentally stumble across one of their channels and give them possibly one more viewer than they deserve.

That goes double for that birdcage liner known as USA Today. I followed a weird link on the Hank story that took me to this pathetic excuse for a newspaper, and as is my habit, I paid more attention to the comments of their readership than I did the feeble attempt at journalism displayed by their so-called writers.

The comments justified my opinion that the readership of Pravda in its day wasn't much different than the readership of USA Today at present.

Seems the viewership of ESPN is much the same.