Maybe we SHOULD consider banning a few things. . .

A ban on Boeing 767 and 777 aircraft would've prevented them from flying into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on September 11th.

A ban on pressure cookers would've prevented the tragedy at the Boston Marathon.

A ban on offensive political cartoons making fun of a Muslim prophet would've prevented the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

A ban on heavy metal music would've prevented the massacre at a Paris concert.

A ban on fertilizer would've prevented the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City.

A ban on oil would've prevented Saddam Hussein from invading Kuwait to rob them of their oil.

A ban on gasoline would've prevented ISIS from burning those pilots alive in a cage.

A ban on water would've prevented ISIS from drowning those prisoners.

A ban on homosexuality would prevent ISIS from tossing homosexuals off of rooftops.

A ban on all religions except for Islam would stop all attacks by Islamic nutbags.  Oh wait. . . whoops. They randomly attack each other as well as innocent people all over the world.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

When funny isn't funny.

Sadly, these aren't funny but rather true.

Some visual food for thought today and a big question of just how we managed to sink to this level.

When gun stores betray gun owners.

I read a tall tale, otherwise known as a story from the New York Daily News, the other day about some guy that I'm guessing was born without functional testicles claiming that firing a few rounds from an ordinary, everyday stock AR-15 game him PTSD. His name is Gersh Kuntzman and he was the yarn-spinner of this tall tale.

If that were the case, we could very well begin having upwards of twenty-million veterans from the past five-plus decades making disability claims to the VA based upon our traumatic experiences in firing select-fire M-16's during our time in the military.

I've linked the story in the opening paragraph, but it's not the real story here.

The appearance of gun stores betraying gun owners is the real story.

In the story, a gun store owner, Frank Stelmach, is seemingly quoted as being significantly sympathetic to the sniveling twit whose shoulder was "bruised" from firing an AR-15. Stelmach is purported in the story to be supportive of mental health background checks and background investigations reaching beyond the applicant and instead extending to their families, friends and even employers before they can purchase an "assault weapon."

There is more and you can read it yourself. But, be advised, make sure you have fresh batteries in your Bullshit Detector. If you do, you'll see it begin pegging towards a 9.5 when Mr. Stelmach is (allegedly) quoted.

The reaction, I'm sure, is exactly what the "journalist" from the NYDY hoped for: Strong, virulent, profane backlash against the gun store owner.

I know my first impression upon reading the story was to fire off an e-mail or private message to Mr. Stelmach suggesting that he commit an anatomically impossible sexual act upon himself while packing up to move back home to Europe when the story says he came from just a few years ago.

But something just wasn't passing the Smell Test.

The story by Kuntzman gave a little too much insight to Mr. (Frank) Stelmach in that it mentioned he had worked as a career law enforcement officer in Europe, then came to America and opened a gun store. That was my first clue. European cops and ex-soldiers who come to America, in my experience, have been fervent supporters and defenders of the Second Amendment. These people have seen--and lived--firsthand in societies and governments that ruled by oppression, be it social or political, and of which rules were enforced by people with guns who wore uniforms. As a result, such "ex-pats" that come to the USA and get their first sip of the nectar of freedom often become our staunchest supporters.

However, that didn't seem to be the case in the story. Instead, it seemed as though Stelmach actually supported more background checks and other (useless) restrictions and obstacles. There are more instances which curl the nose and peg the BSD (Bullshit Detector) in the story, but those are not the point. You can read Mr. Stelmach's rebuttal to the underhanded trickery pulled on him by Kuntzman here.

The point is this: I fear that these "hit journalists" will be coming out with a lot more "stories" like this in which gun store owners are intentionally misquoted or selectively edited, ala Katie Couric, in order to draw the instant, immediate and insane ire of the gun-owning community. Thanks to social media, one can make one's opinion known with the click of a mouse and depending upon the reach, that opinion can then be seen and shared by tens of millions of people in mere hours.

The destruction to one's reputation can be catastrophic--and the anti-gun media is counting on it.

So my appeal to all gun-owners is this: If/when you read a story in which a gun store or prominent individual is quoted regarding firearms in such a way as to cause you to wonder exactly where they stand on the issue, do a little homework. Call the gun store. E-mail/message the gun-owner. Get it from them firsthand.

The goal here, by the anti-gun cowards, is to enrage and divide our community, then take our comments made in haste in response to such stories and plaster them in front of our elected officials in an attempt to "show how even gun owners want more gun control laws."

To those who run, own, operate or work in a gun store, I would do the same amount of background checking on any journalist who wants a quote or story from you as that journalist claims they want on any law-abiding citizen who is looking to purchase a PTSD-causing AR-15.

If the journalist or their newspaper or station shows to have run consistent anti-gun stories and positions in the past, turn them away.

Tell them they didn't pass your background check for integrity and ethics.

It continues to come true.

In 2012, I released Above Reproach, a novel.

In 2016, almost the entire plot has now come true.

It's time for the end.

Confessing to a crime now makes one a hero.

If I were to come out of the criminal closet and confess to having embezzled approximately $500,000 from the U.S. Treasury and various state treasuries, it would not be long before the feds came pounding on my door.

I'd be the subject of various local and state news media stories and when people saw my face and house, they'd be calling for me to be severely punished. After all, I was stealing from them via taking money--tax dollars--and using them for my own pleasure and gain. And God help me if I tried to publicly justify what I did, especially after the general public saw my middle-aged caucasian mug shot.

I would be Public Enemy #1 for however long the average American's attention span lasts. (Fortunately, that might only be for a few hours.) I certainly would not get an all-expenses paid free education at a major Tier One university. More than likely, I would get an all-expenses paid stay in a federal correctional institute.

However, if I were to publicly confess that I embezzled all this money as an illegal alien by way of the fiscal benefits I received during my criminal stay here, and I had "nice legs," I'd be heralded as a hero by almost half of the nation. I'd be called brave and a fighter and a hard worker. And it all might be true.

But I'd still be a criminal.

We've seen at least two instances this past week of valedictorians who graduated from Texas high schools boast of their illegal status. One little tart tweeted it in our faces--while bragging about her nice legs (an opinion not shared by many--and while waving a Mexican flag.

The other interjected it into her address to her fellow students.

Both should be immediately charged with illegal entry and illegal residency in the U.S. and deported back to Mexico.

One girl purports that she and her mother fled Mexico City and an abusive, alcoholic father and that's why they came to the U.S.

My question is why did they not come through the entry control points at the border and register? Instead of coming here legally, they did so illegally--and they stayed for the next six years illegally. I'm confident that somewhere on government assistance forms or job applications, more lies were told because otherwise their immigration and residency status would have been noted and Miss Valedictorian would not have to have stayed so mum for six years before popping the announcement of her illegal status like a proud nouveau riche prom queen announcing her pregnancy a few weeks after senior prom.

I've been told that I should be saluting these young women's hard work. I respond by telling such people that drug cartels work damned hard, too. So do money launderers and identity thieves. Problem is, they're criminals.

In Life, there is a right way to do things and a wrong way. In America, there is a right way to enter this country and a wrong way. The more we continue to reward immigrants flooding in illegally, the more we deteriorate as both a society and a nation.

And now that our public schools apparently herald these "brave young women" who confess to being criminals, the more we "officialize" the message to successive generations that the rules no longer matter.

By allowing these girls, and others like them, to remain in this country and enjoy the fruits of the hard work of legal citizens, the more we insult those immigrants who came here correctly and went through the citizenship process.

I'll lay odds that one or the other of these girls will magically find their way to Philadelphia for the Democratic Convention this summer and both will be heralded as "brave" and "courageous" and "exemplifying what America is about" by Hillary and her shills.

Anyone want to bet against me?

Conservatives my ass.

My maternal grandmother, God rest her soul, had a colorful vocabulary and zero hesitation in expressing it. When she disagreed with something, her favorite retort was, "My ass!"

If only she were alive today.

So today I'm heading out to the airport to do some flying and I hear one of the radio talking heads having a discussion about "Who should replace Donald Trump as the nominee at the convention?"

Wait a minute. Trump pretty much swept the primaries. He took in more votes than Reagan did in 1980 and 1984. He is the ultimate outsider and has endured being maligned by some of the most egregious of Beltway insiders--failures like Hanoi John McCain, Lyin' Paul Ryan, Harry Reid's lapdog Mitch McConnell, "Mr. Amnesty" Lindsey Graham, and a whole septic tank of additional elected Establishment thieves and liars.

Then toss in that nutsack Glenn Beck and his grub-stain sniffers Brad Thor and Ted Cruz, among others. Cruz is really hilarious. . . "Mr. Constitution himself" who along with his supporters continue to rumble about 'superdelegates' being able to decide who the nominee will be in Cleveland by "voting their conscience" rather than voting in accordance with representing the votes cast by the citizens of their precinct.

And there's Brad Thor, a NYT Bestselling writer who's made his living by endlessly kissing the ass and jocksniffing bonafide military and police veterans while having never served a day himself--but calling himself an absolute patriot. Except if Trump wins the presidency and actually tells Saudi Arabia to kiss our ass or instructs the Chinese to bend over because we're gonna tariff their cheap crap. Then Mr. Super Patriot ask which one of us--ostensibly those of us who've served--will step up to "take him (Trump) out?"

Why, what a stalwart of conservative constitutional principles we have here!

Or, as my beloved grandmother would say, "My ass!"

Now I read on Yahoo that another loudmouth with a microphone, Erick Erickson is ballyhooing about Cleveland and making audible diarrhea about "Trump must be stopped."

Joining this guy, who I only rarely heard of on the rare occasions he would fill in for Mark Levin--who conveniently failed to tell anyone that his fianceé's son is a Cruz staffer AND that the RNC purchased enough of a lump sum of Levin's books to earn him a half-million dollar-plus royalty--or a few of the lesser rated talking heads, is some other guy by the name of Hugh Hewitt.

Hugh Who?

And there's more. Illinois senator Mark Kirk, who it's rumored was born without testicles or a spine, rescinded his "endorsement" of Trump because Trump's people pointed out that both the judge and the prosecutor in the Trump University case have direct, managerial ties to La Raza. This apparently, in Kirk's eyes, makes Trump a racist for pointing out such facts. So Kirk withdraws his support, which he never really lent in the first place.

But he's a Republican. Therefore he's a conservative.

My ass.

Somebody named David French is on the bandwagon along with someone else named Steve Deace and A.J. Spiker, a "former" Republican party chairman of something or the other. And then the second biggest loser in Arizona history, Senator Jeff Flake, comes out on the same bandwagon.

A common thread here is that every single person named so far epitomized the Washington Establishment. Trump represents a nuclear explosion to "the way we've always done things inside the Beltway."

And that just can't be allowed.

So, these so-called "conservatives" jump up and are now trying to effectively squash and suppress the will of American citizens who registered in record numbers and took those same record numbers to the polls to vote for a candidate they believed was NOT another talking sack of shit from inside the Beltway.

That's what conservatives do now? Then count me out.

Look, I don't agree with everything Trump says but here's the deal: He's not a lawyer, he's never been elected to office, he comes from the private sector, he doesn't take being attacked lying down and instead fights back. America used to be like that, for those of you who either have forgotten or never knew it. Hit us and we hit you back a hundred times harder. Ask Germany. Ask Japan. Ask Saddam Hussein's old Republican Guard.

Now we apologize for you hitting us.

Trump is not a politician in that he throws decorum out the window. Guess what? So did Teddy Roosevelt. Trump can be bombastic. So could Harry Truman. So Trump donated to both sides of the aisle during every election to hedge his bets and so therefore he is really a Democrat? Reagan was a lifelong Democrat before switching over to the Republican party and becoming one of our most successful presidents in American history.

Fact is, the People of this nation have spoken by way of the ballot box--the single most democratic way of expressing our voice there is--and certain control-mongering Establishment elites and wannabe-insiders don't like it. So they want to bend rules, rewrite the rules, create new rules, do whatever it takes to get somebody not beholden to them out of the nomination and electoral process. Trump and his supporters have earned their shot at the title, but these asshat Establishment "conservatives" not only don't like it, but are trying to deny him and those who supported him their shot.

Or to put it another way, they want to negate the votes of millions of Americans so that they can have it their way.

Conservatives my ass.

So in loving memory of my beloved grandmother, I just put a "Veterans For Trump" bumper sticker on my pickup truck.

How to pay a traffic ticket Texas-style

I have no love lost for over-zealous traffic enforcement. We can thank the Clinton administration and their "100,000 new cops on the street" BS that literally overloaded our suburbs and every little podunk town from Fishbite Falls, Iowa to Hogsnot, Georgia to Nutsack Central, California with their very own police force. Previously, the sheriff's office would patrol those same areas, but now a little town of maybe a thousand has its very own police force.

Of course, you have to pay for that somehow. . .

Enter that great bastion of legendary crime fighting known as "speed traps" and "rolling through a stop sign."

The last ticket I got was less than a hundred yards from my house in our little suburb. The barely-old-enough-to-shave officer accused me of "rolling through a stop sign" as I was turning left heading to my cul-de-sac. I'm pretty sure I didn't roll through it, but his word against mine, you know?

I went down to City Hall and raised pure effing hell with the city manager. I shouted that we must have ALL CRIMES SOLVED, CLOSED AND THE CRIMINALS CONVICTED AND LOCKED AWAY since we had so much time and resources to sit on our asses at 2:00 in the afternoon in dead-end streets waiting on a traffic violation.

And that is my point. During my time in law enforcement, I never met a good cop that wanted to be relegated to traffic enforcement. If they caught you busting a read light or scorching through a four-way stop sign or something of the such, they'd certainly pull you over and ticket you.

No problem.

But these dipdunk city managers and useless "chiefs of police" of these three-person departments who can only exist on traffic fines. . . That's not police work.

That's revenue collecting.

This guy had the right idea how to handle his fine and it's a work of pure art.

Enjoy.