What Discount Tire and Barack Obama have in common.

Our family has been loyal customers of Discount Tires for several decades. I took a break from buying tires at DT during my Kansas City ad agency years in which we had Tire America and National Tire Warehouse as clients, as well as Western Auto and Sears Automotive.  I also worked on the campaign that merged Tire America and National Tire Warehouse into NTB--National Tire & Battery.

I know how do-it-for-me shops operate and I know how tire shops operate.

Discount Tire no longer operates like a tire shop. It now operates like a government co-op healthcare plan. You are promised one thing, you pay for it, then when you need it, it's explained to you that the co-op changed and now, here are the NEW rules.

You can go all the way to the top and get zilch for satisfaction. After all, Obama is the top asshat in the circus that is national healthcare.

For the same nonsense in dealing with Discount Tire, you can go all the way to to the top, which is corporate headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, and get exactly the same satisfaction and change you would when dealing with Obama.

Zilch.

And then there is the quality of service. . .

More zilch.

For the record, we buy Michelin tires for our vehicles. 80,000 mile Michelins. Lots and lots of Michelins. We'll scrimp on some things, but for the automobiles, we do not scrimp on tires and brakes. Ever. And for decades, we've been buying Michelin tires from Discount Tires. With the purchase comes lifetime rotation and balancing. And a warranty, of which we've never needed.

Until today.

Several days ago, my wife took her Avalon in for the annual tire rotation and balancing. We'd been experiencing a slow leak on the driver's side front tire. Not too bad, but once every five to six days, we needed to put several pounds of air in.

Both Toyota and Michelin's corporate offices recommend 32 pounds PSI for the front tires (front-wheel drive car, plus carrying the load/weight of the engine), and 31 pounds PSI for the rear. That is what we keep the pressure at. I have a rather large air compressor in my workshop and have run an air line into our garage, complete with a 50' hose reel and an air chuck so as to make it easier to keep all our tires properly inflated.

Wife comes home with freshly rotated tires. With radials, you rotate front to back and never side to side. That was with the old bias-ply tires. Radials--front to back, back to front, on the same side of the car.

The next morning, we woke up to a completely flat tire on the front PASSENGER side. The slow leak tire was on the DRIVER'S side, ostensibly now at the rear if it had been rotated properly.

I jack the car up and inflate the tire, then get to looking at the rear passenger side tire. It looked almost flat as well. Tire gauge showed it to have 14 pounds PSI. 14 pounds! Less than half of what is called for. For the record, it had 32 PSI when it went to Discount Tire. So why did they deflate it? I suspect they also deflated the front passenger side tire as well.

The driver's side tires. . . front had 44 pounds PSI and the rear had 48 pounds PSI. Again, they had 32 PSI and 31 PSI when my wife took the car in for rotation. A quick call to the Discount Tire yielded no answer.

So I fired off one helluva complaint to the Regional Office in Dallas. One week later, crickets.

Today, the same tire (front passenger) went flat again. I changed it, put on the spare and my wife headed to Discount Tire to ask some tough questions. They told her that we had put Fix-A-Flat in the tire and that it had hardened all over the inside of the tire, wheel and rim and could not form a good seal.

For the record, in all of my almost 55 years of existence on this planet, I have never used a single can of Fix-A-Flat. Ever.  I have used the green slime stuff on riding lawnmower and garden tractor tires as well as one of the tires on my big Troy-Bilt Horse Tiller. It works pretty well, by the way, but it doesn't leave this hardened gunk the way Discount Tire claims was on the wheel of the ruined tire.

Secondly, when the tire first went flat, I found a bunch of gray grease had oozed out. It was not hardened whatsoever and better yet, it hadn't even been in there long enough to begin collecting any rubber residue from the inside of the tire nor on the rim long enough to even collect road grime. Only place this stuff could've come from was Discount Tire.

My wife flat out told the DT guy that we didn't use Fix-A-Flat on the quality and grade of tires we buy--if they can't be repaired by the tire shop, we replace them with new ones, two at a time and that our by-God service records of almost three decades will prove it over and over.

So she ends up getting two new Michelin tires installed for the pro-rata warranty price. But since this problem originated over a simple rotation and balance on a FRONT-WHEEL DRIVE car, the geniuses at Discount Tire install the new tires on the REAR and rotate the old tires back up to the front--where they were just several days ago!

So much for getting your tires rotated.

And. . . hold on to your hats, when we checked the tire pressure on all four tires? Well over-inflated again.

Yet the more you try to talk to these "sales reps" and what passes for management at Discount Tire, the more they simply nod or smirk or smile or sneer and not a damn thing gets done. When you offer to call Corporate, they smile even bigger--they smile because they know the asshats in Scottsdale aren't going to do a damn thing.

Don't believe me. Check out the Consumer Affairs complains. People from all over the United States are telling basically the same stories about non-rotated tires, over-inflated or under-inflated and other instances dealing with outright dishonesty that appears suspiciously to be corporate directive driven.

In a plethora of different online consumer reporting services, the complaints about Discount Tire share some frightening and dangerous similarities:

1. Over/under-inflating tires. The end-all, be-all for tires is inflation. How can a TIRE COMPANY screw that up in so many instances in so many different locales? Most consumers pay little to no attention to tire pressure, so by over/under-inflating tires, exaggerated premature wear occurs and DT has the opportunity to sell more tires to prematurely returning customers.

However, it's also dangerous as hell.

2. Not rotating tires when they say they do. Pretty self-explanatory.

3. Moving tires eligible for redemption of warranty (read: having to replace the tire) because of road hazard causes to the opposite side of the car and claiming that the "affected tire" has nothing wrong with it. That qualifies as outright fraud.

4. While not illegal whatsoever, Discount Tire's "appointment process" is as useless as Obama's ACA enrollment websites were upon launching. Just as with the contempt and disregard POTUS shows the citizenry, likewise Discount Tires shows the same contempt to its customers.

So to Obama and the Obamacare elected officials: We can vote your ass out of office, and we've began doing just that.

To Discount Tire, we consumers have a vote and it's with our pockeboots and likewise, we can vote your ass right out of business.

Our family is doing both.

The "Screw That" movement--It's what built this country.

America's brain, Albert Einstein, once declared that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.

To that end, America has been certifiably insane for several decades, but with no viable way to escape the asylum.

Finally we have a way out of the nuthouse.

I'm talking about the way we approach, view and elect a president.

I'm a conservative--not a Republican. Paraphrasing the late great Ronald Reagan, I didn't leave the Republican party, it left me. Reagan, of course, said this about the Democrat party. A few years later, Texas senator and leading hypocrite Phil Gramm said the same thing when he abandoned the party that would've sent him into political unemployment and pitched his pirate boat into the fertile waters of the GOP.

Today's GOP is known as the RINO Establishment. And it's getting a very bloody nose thanks to the most unlikely of people, namely Donald Trump. Right there in Trump's footsteps are Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz.

They're all running for President of the United States--and they're doing it on the GOP's ticket. Their poll numbers are astounding.

One would think, given the ass-whipping the Republicans have taken on the world's biggest political stage--that of the race to be POTUS--that the GOP would be thrilled to have not one, but four candidates who have set the political water cooler talk on fire and who fill arenas and stadiums to capacity fifteen months ahead of the November 2016 election.

That is decidedly not the case. The RINO Establishment, led by the Republican Party's answer to the Kennedys, the Bush family, along with the mouthpiece of the Establishment, Fox News, at first laughed off the antics of Donald Trump and the field. But when the poll numbers not only stayed steady, but began growing for Trump, Fox and royalty had to do something. So they did what all Establishment cartels do and attacked.

Normally when a politician is attacked by an opponent or the press, they come back with a very polite and politically correct statement that never really addresses the facts and only serves to take up ink and space on the newsprint page.

Not Trump. The industry leader said "Screw that," and answered each attack with a scathing, no-holds bare knuckles blithering one-two-three punch right back at his attacker.

The Establishment was horrified. The usual modus operandi in such previously rare occurrences was to have Cartel leadership whisper a few quiet words to the offending rebel and hint that campaign funding would dry up if such independent and truthful counter-attacks were to occur.

Once again, Trump said, "Screw that and screw you." He's self funding and not beholden to the GOP Cartel.

Most notable was when Fox News fraud Megyn Kelly, who upon hitching her star to Murdoch's network has presented herself as the Mother Theresa of virtuosity and pureness (oops, except for that little erotica interview she enjoyed a bit too much with Howard Stern) decided to attack Trump in front of a huge national audience over something he said referring to Rosie O'Donnell--but Kelly, in her role as head eye candy for Roger Ailes, set herself up for the journalistic equivalent of a Joe Frazier/Mohammed Ali flight. She scored a quick blow that Trump quickly parried and then after the debate on Twitter, Trump knocked her out for the count.

Kelly's credibility still hasn't recovered. When she publicly challenges Ted Cruz or Ben Carson these days, the thinking public's reaction is "Screw that, I'm gonna check the facts." More often than not, Kelly and Fox News comes up short.

They come up short because they have an agenda and that is to protect and foist upon the public another lame candidate such as they did with McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012.

But this time, conservative and independent America is saying , "Screw that."

It's about bloody time.

The front runners in the GOP race right now are all decidedly non-politicians. One could argue that Cruz is a politician, however he is less than halfway through his first time of ever having held an elected political office and he is unabashedly anti-GOP Cartel, which has caused the Republican's royal family, the Bush bunch, to go after him. Recently, George W went after Cruz while fundraising for his little brother, Jeb, at an event in which they had to lower the tickets to attend to just $250 a piece in order to get even a hundred people in to fill the room.

$250 to get in an meet a former president of the United States who is fundraising and speaking to the public? Typical price for something like this is a minimum of a thousand bucks per person and they can go as high as $25,000 per plate/person. Sounds like another "Screw that" by the conservatives and independents who see the Bush bunch for what they are.

Trump is on fire and getting stronger because he represents and voices the "Screw that" in so much of middle-America that is frustrated with how things have gone for the past two decades. Trump is spending a lot of time in flyover country and packing in the arenas and concert halls and venues everywhere he goes. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorini have become household names. Ted Cruz has become the anti-Christ to the GOP Cartel but for the masses of true conservatives and independents, he's more like Paul who never wavered in his faith or mission and for which he paid dearly. Cruz has been vilified more than any other GOP candidate in recent history, led by Texas' own Judas Iscariot, aka Senator John Cornyn. Yet Cruz endures because real Americans see power-weasels like Judas Cornyn and say, "Screw that."

Long time ago, the British throne kept demanding more and more from the colonies, to the point that it became insufferable. Our Founding Fathers said, "Screw that. We're changing things." And against all odds, they did.

Today, the Republican Establishment keeps demanding more and more from their constituents for no other purpose other than to further enrich and empower themselves.

We say, "Screw that."

The Bush cartel gets busted again.

For the record, I am glad beyond any words I could fit on this page that George W was in the Oval Office on (and after) September 11, 2001.

Had the idiot Al Gore been in charge, you'd in all likelihood be reading this in Farsi or Arabic. Gore has the spine of a centipede.

But with that said, the only area where I looked at George W or his dad as being good presidents was in their military efforts. Domestically, they were abysmal failures. Sr. Bush handed us the Clintons, which are like grub stains in underwear--you can bleach and soak and wash, but that stain will always hang around.

George W handed us Obama, which IS and will forever be a permanent grub stain on the underwear of America.

Now another Bush is wanting center stage but Americans won't be fooled a third time.

A Jeb Bush staffer has been outed as being a plant by CNN (gee, what a surprise) in the audience of the last debate.

This is yet one more example of how the Bush cartel has sold their soul to the Karl Rove RINO establishment--the wonderful clan who is now pushing Paul "Flip Flop" Ryan on us as Speaker, but only after Kevin McCarthy was outed for being the (known) weasel he is.

For the record, I like Ted Cruz. I'm proud to have supported him in his bid for U.S. Senator. But even during that race, I watched the Bush family work behind the scenes to push their lapdog, David Dewhurst on us. The way Dewhurst was crushed in the primary should tell the rest of America what we think of the Bush family so far as politics are concerned.

Now the family and their RINO establishment supporters are trying to do the same thing with favored son Jeb while working behind the scenes attacking other candidates that are striking chords with the populace on both sides of the aisles. At the same time, the cartel continues to attempt to maneuver laughable candidates like Christie and Kasich and Rubio into more favorable positions in order to siphon votes/support away from Trump, Carson, Cruz and Fiorini--the true political outsiders.

Sorry Rove, Bush family and supporters--your playbook has been exposed and you've fooled us on a national level twice before. Take a cue from the Cruz election for the Senate and how Texans saw right through you.

Because now it seems America is seeing right through you.

Good.

Select-fire penises coming to Austin.

I love it when I can get two puns for the price of one. . .

It seems the longhorned sheep of the University of Texas/Austin forty-acre flock are afraid of guns. The reasons they give are antithetical to any sensibility of logic and critical thinking they should be learning at the Berkeley, Texas campus.

So it seems some girl that is a "performance violin major," (now there's a hot degree that today's downtrodden economy has been begging for, eh?) is starting a protest movement for female students to carry working dildos, openly, as a protest to concealed carry on the forty-acre sheep pasture of higher, if not questionable, education.

And to think I've been wasting all this time teaching our girls how to shoot, situational awareness, how to conceal, etc etc, when all they REALLY needed was to be packing a brightly colored sex toy in plain sight to scare off bad people. After all, this is "the" university of Texas where all graduates are entitled to six-figure beginning salaries, liberal utopian working conditions and where the real world stops at the campus boundaries.

To my girls, I do apologize for trying to teach you and prepare you for real world possibilities.

Now I'm off to write a letter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposing that we start a "Dildos For The Troops" fundraiser to immediately begin issuing these battery-operated, full-auto penises of peace to our troops serving in the MIddle East.

But one question--what are the males at university of Texas going to carry to show solidarity?

Eight-year-old terrorist causes school lockdown in San Francisco.

Yes, you read it right.

It seems that in the People's Republic of Kalifornia, San Fransicastahn, an eight-year-old headcase runs around screaming at other students as well as teachers. He is reported to have punched a couple of students in the belly and to have thrown rocks.

So far there has been no body count, but given this is the bay area of Kalifornia, we know that it is only a matter of days, maybe even hours, before the bodies of innocent children, hopeful teachers and aspirations-creating administrators begin stacking up like firewood in the Siberian forest before an Arctic blizzard.

In a quest to delay the inevitable body count and carnage that is imminent from this eight-year-old terror, school officials proudly admit to having had the school on lockdown for everyone's safety and ostensibly to keep San Franciscastahn from being leveled.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the country parents, grandparents and ordinary Americans everywhere are asking the obvious question: Why hasn't the little brat been removed from school and given back to his breeders (parents)?

I'm guessing this is because it's a public school, and not just any public school but one located in the bay area of the People's Republic of Kalifornia where they have perfected the art of becoming a professional victim along with getting the rest of the nation to pay for it.

Chalk this up as yet another reason I'm such a staunch supporter of school vouchers.

Mr. Obama, you are a coward.

Mr. Obama,

First off, I'm not addressing you as "Mr. President" because to do so would infer that you are some sort of a leader. You are not. In fact, you are quite the opposite.

The blood of the victims in today's shooting in Oregon is on your hands, not mine. From the outset of your occupation of the White House, your agenda has been to divide, cast aspersions, deflect and blame. However, you've done this from a distance, further exemplifying the coward that you are.

You see, Mr. Obama, you have sided and empathized with every attack on white middle-class Christians that has occurred in this nation. You do so by blaming an inanimate object or a random video on YouTube or, my favorite, "intolerance."

You're a joke, Mr. Obama. A macabre, pathetic one, but a joke nonetheless.

I was no fan of Bill Clinton. I served under Jimmy Carter, another complete waste product of a White House occupant. I also served under Ronald Reagan, a giant of a man. I was born into the Kennedy presidency and grew up in the LBJ atrocities. I saw Nixon lie and never thought we'd ever have such a weasel mismanaging America again.

Then you came along.

Without doubt, you are the most effeminate, un-manly occupant to ever take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. You bow to everyone including Saudi royalty and Chinese presidents while giving an iPod containing your speeches as a no-name "voting present" senator to the Queen of England. You have Marines hold an umbrella over your head during a light drizzle while you gave a speech.

You're no leader. You're a coward.

Leaders lead from the front. Cowards, like you, organize and agitate and then stay at the back of the crowd letting others do the actual fighting. In my crowd of veterans and stand-up Texans, we call people like you "chickenshits." Ask anyone with an agricultural background the significance of why being labeled as "chickenshit" is so derogatory.

Your lack of leadership and instead calculated divisiveness is responsible for the violent attacks on middle-class Americans as well as Christians throughout the world. You can blame my guns all you want, but you and I both know that guns are not the problem.

The problem is that when Eric Holder, your handpicked slum-chum, gave carte blanche to the New Black Panthers to physically intimidate voters, such as they did in Philadelphia, every pissant in America that has an axe to grind just became empowered.

But that is what community organizers do--they organize losers into crowds, then agitate them into action. And all the while, you hide behind your Secret Service body guards.

You lend your voice and office to Michael Brown's family before you knew any facts. Even your own handpicked AG couldn't find an instance of Brown's rights being violated, yet you said nothing and let a good man, Officer Wilson, perish career-wise. That's chickenshit.

One of your most enthusiastic supporters ambushed and murdered two fellow workers in Virginia and you once again blamed guns rather than the maniac who ate, lived, slept and breathed your manifesto. That's chickenshit.

You've continuously attacked and maligned the over 80 million Americans who freely exercise their Second Amendment rights. You swore an Oath to defend those rights, Mr. Obama, yet you divide America and give carte blanche for the nutcases you agitate to freely attack us and then have the audacity to argue that more gun laws would've prevented what happened today in Oregon? That's chickenshit, Mr. Obama.

Be advised, Mr. Obama, we will not relinquish our rights. Not one of them. And we will not tolerate such attacks on our innocent citizens. In Texas, CHL is legal on college campuses. In Texas, we're arming our school teachers and administrators. In Texas, we refuse to be willing victims set up by a divisive, agitating rabble-rouser like yourself.

Our neighbors to the north in Oklahoma aren't too crazy about you as well. If you recall, you did not carry one single, solitary county during your last election. The good people of Oklahoma aren't too keen on chickenshits like yourself, either.

There will be more violence in America, more mass-shootings and attempted mass-shootings. You've done well setting the stage, Mr. Obama, for the violence against Christians and middle-class Americans and law enforcement that we are seeing with increasing frequency. The successful attacks will be in gun-free zones such as we saw today and you'll be right there to blame the gun rather than the murderer. But in those areas where we're not quite so willing to be the victim, there will be a different outcome.

In closing, Mr. Obama, you can blame and whine and pout and threaten all you want because here are the facts, and they are simple:

1. Gun-free zones are simply like bringing the pigeons to the cat.

2. A significant majority of us will never, ever give up our guns.

3. You are the poster child of American history as to why our Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment.

J.D. Kinman
Dallas, Texas