Sardines

You can't put people in a can like sardines. The very strength of the American experience stems from its diversity and compromise. What is a democracy? Pure democracy is nine wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Republic is while winning the vote the rights of the sheep must be respected. Those rights are ordained to the human experience, unalienable, which cannot be taken away or denied.

With the current election the polarization of America is almost complete. On one side the Republicans will support Donald Trump no matter what he says, and the Democrats will hold to Hillary Clinton no matter what she does, so what you have is a bean count with no rhyme or reason. Between the two groups there is a vast wasteland of ideas, and opinions where most of us really live. Verily, verily I say unto you that the real condition of the country is beyond the agendas of the two parties.

There is a big push to either throw all the Muslims out of the country, or at least stem the tide of immigration. Now, when you analyze the opinion of most people, while agreeing with the idea of national security, will not really want to deport the guy down at the Quickie Mart with whom they’ve been trading with for ten years, yet as  supporters of the conservative end they must give lip service to exactly that! And the Muslims bring this upon themselves by demonstrating the exact same apathy! A bomb goes off, a nightclub. Is shot up, and the majority of the Islamic community is quietly sitting on the sidelines. This is in part human nature.

Then there is gun control. The constitutional purist wants complete freedom for any citizen to own and carry any gun. When it is proposed to not allow people on the “no fly” list to have a gun the right goes spastic, but consider; would you really be comfortable with some foreigner being able to buy a gun when he isn't even allowed to buy a plane ticket? Hey! We’re in that middle ground again. Expand it to this: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Foreign students here on a visa are not “the people!” And, right back on the so-called “Terrorist Watch List!” The guy in Orlando; interviewed three times by the FBI, allowed to buy guns, and he wasn't a person of interest? Meanwhile, Doc Greene is all over their radar because he supports the constitution! Now, I'm just a simple ol’ boy from Austin, but I just can't get my mind around that. With what I write, every time they let me on a plane I think it's my birthday!

Immigration. The left wants an open border with everyone singing “Kumbaya!” The right wants to seal the border off, and neither side understands that we already have laws concerning immigration that if only enforced would solve the problem. The one problem with people coming in now is they are not American, nor do they want to be American. They are not “The people!” They want to drag all the trappings of their country of origin with them, indeed replace the very structure of America with the very system they were supposedly fleeing in the first place. Sharia Law!

Political correctness. Just look at one of Hillary’s main lures to the left. We've had a black president (well, mostly black) so now we need a woman president. What's next? A transgender president? Hey, I have an idea. Why not an Apache president? Even our very freedom of speech is threatened by political correctness. “Free Speech Zones!” What is that? And the “N” word? When you are talking to a black person, and use the phrase, “The ‘N’ word,” YOU JUST CALLED HIM THE ‘N’WORD! Not only that, you just reinforced the barrier that still exists between him and you because you just reminded him that after all is said and done, he’s still the “N” word. And you're looking wimpy and stupid while you do it! It's so simple to understand this when you're a “Cracker,” I mean “C” word.

Common sense is required here, folks. Also, an understanding of America, it's people, it's government, and its traditions. When I was in school, back in the day, it was mandatory here that you had to take Texas History, and civics. Now we have a whole crop of kids that think Dr. King freed the slaves. We need to clean up shop. If the children of this nation are taught what made America great, and at least know there is a Bill of Rights, then we’ll still have conservatives and liberals in twenty years, but at least they will be informed conservatives and liberals.

Wine and Cheese

Spent yesterday doing two of my two favorite things, wine and cheese, and the Kennedy assassination. I've come full circle on the latter. Listening to all the ideas about what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and after enough wine, I developed an image in my mind of the faces, and positions of shooters in the plaza that day.  I could imagine J. Edgar Hoover in the county records building, Gordon Liddy hiding in a sewer, George H. W. Bush supervising from the sidewalk in front of the Texas School Book Depository, Lyndon Johnson bringing up the rear, Fidel Castro hiding behind the fence atop the grassy knoll, and last, but not least, the driver of the presidential limo, stopping the car so he could turn and deliver the kill shot!

I watched a whole bunch of videos under the umbrella of "Fifty Years." First of all that made me feel old when I realize that I remembered that event as if it were yesterday. Next, I realized that these people expounding these theories had all been born after the assassination. As we, of the Kennedy years die off there is a whole new crop of wackos there to take the torch, or eternal flame, and forge on in the search for “the truth.” Then a truth hit me in the face. Fifty years! It's been fifty freaking years! Slowly, my mind began to focus. A little more wine, a few more videos. All of these people agree on one thing. Kennedy was killed by a huge, multi-layered conspiracy stretching from Dallas to the Kremlin. From Bourbon Street to Havana. From the Pentagon to some cat house in Mexico City. Everybody was in on it. And in fifty long years nobody broke the silence. Let that soak in for a minute.

Now I want you to think about our government’s score card for successful and secret plots during that same period of time. Politicians construct an image of themselves, an image that bleeds over to the constructed government we’ve all come to know and love. Strong in stature, eyes steeled upon the horizon, the winds of destiny forever blowing in their hair. They never have to go to the bathroom, and if they do, it doesn't smell bad. They all have one thing in common. They cannot accomplish a single thing without all the cats getting out of the bag, and spraying the room. Whistle blowers? How about the New York Symphony Orchestra? Shall we peel the onion?

Lyndon Johnson,  Gulf of Tonkin. We bought that for years until it splattered all over the press that the driving force behind the Vietnam war was a contrived lie in order to make the war profiteers rich. Johnson charged into that mess like a cowboy, and got beat up by a bunch of skinny kids in pajamas with sharp sticks. I Crappith Thee NOT! I cried my teenage butt off at the last scene from John Wayne’s “Green Berets.” When I see the Vets sitting in the VA dying for an appointment I'm still crying!

Then here came Richard “Outhouse” Nixon. His elite, his expert spies, the cream of the crop, the same dudes that engineered the Bay of Pigs, couldn't pull off a burglary that a crackhead could do. Then he digs himself into a hole by recording what amounted to be a confession, and visibly erasing eighteen minutes. Now people, he set up those recordings himself! How stupid was that? Right on up there with the Germans immaculate records of the holocaust! And this bastion of conservatism, this Quaker used language that would make a sailor blush with shame. Before it was all over two cub reporters put his business in the street. Got drunk, blubbered some crap about his mother on national TV, and got one more free ride to his exile the next day. Bada Bing, Bada boom! Oh, one side note; the burglars were the same idiots who supposedly set up the JFK thing. Go figure!

Carter wasn't too bad. About the only thing was he couldn't find a girl friend, but he thought about it a lot.  Oh, and that little problem with Iran busting his balls forEVER! I will give the Ayatollah Khomeini one thing, he didn't kill any of the hostages. It was too much fun watching Carter talk about “sin in his heart” while his brother started a brewery.

Reagan! Can I say, “Iran Contra?” Yeah, y'all remember that, don't you? Little deal Reagan cut with Iran (IRAN!?) to fund a bunch of cigar chomping rebels in Nicaragua. You see, we were selling arms to Iran, and then funneling the profits into a sink hole in South America. You can't make this stuff up, folks. Oliver North tweaked this mess in order to overthrow the government of Nicaragua because they were communist, and we already had a communist in Cuba. At least Reagan never went on the air declaring that he wasn't a crook, right? End result was the rebels didn't win, and the Ayatollah laughed his butt off.

George H. W. Bush. Never trust a guy with four names. Dove into Iraq, and didn't even finish the job. Signed an  agreement with the very guy he was after on the promise that he wouldn't be a bad boy anymore. Years later Bush II charges back over there because he couldn't tell the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’a. “Them boys all look alike to me.” He went looking for weapons of mass destruction based on  a big ol’ LIE, and successfully destabilized the entire region. This gave us the “Arab Spring” (Springtime for Hitler?) which we still enjoy today. For the record, folks, Arabs don't have a spring, it's always hot over there.

And last, but not least, Bill “Horndawg” Clinton! Now this is a rough one, get the kids out of the room because there's simply no way to address his administration without UNdressing Miss Lewinsky. Now, this article began by suggesting the government can't keep a lid on anything, and this one takes the cake, or takes the pizza, rather. This cat can't get away with a hot date with a twenty-two year old girl while the Secret Service was guarding the door. The, uh, same Secret Service that was keeping a wary eye on Kennedy back in ’63 I might add. The forensic evidence? Well, there was this unwashed dress she kept a hanging in her closet. Now, I'm just a Simple Ol’ Boy From Austin, and I've picked up “10 at 2” that morphed into a “2 at 10,” but boys and girls, they all washed their clothes, ok? And these were TEXAS girls! The most powerful man in the world. Ah, such is life. When the Swallows return to the White House . . . I mean Capistrano.

Sovereignty

Brexit delivered the Illuminati  a hit last night. The people of Britain voted to be, well, British! While there are many causes, and layers to this event, it basically boils down to one thing, sovereignty! Funny thing, sovereignty. People wanting to run their own business, on their own terms, for their own interests. People tend to think that they may know what's going on in their back yard better than, say, some group two thousand miles away that doesn't even speak the same language. Kinda like Texans trying to make sense out of some guy in New York.

While the news today centered on the market there was another burr under the British saddle. Immigration. You have to look hard, which I did, but there was a rule in this European Union thing that said members had to, well,  relax the standards by which “immigrants” could enter the country. See where this is going folks? Yep. Sharia law in the middle of London. As the poor disenfranchised masses streamed out of the “cradle of civilization”  British sovereignty was flushed into the Thames.

The British finally stood up. They're more American than we are. This makes perfect sense because the founding fathers were basically British citizens, and  did the same thing in 1776. Sixty years later Texas explained that concept to Santa Anna. Sovereignty is like that. Last night’s vote was a shot heard round the world. Now this doesn't mean that the EU is dissolved. It'll take some time for this divorce to be final,, and when you're divorcing a whore it's always complicated. There is a pre-nup covering thousands of pages. But, Britain stood up. The people spoke. One thing I really liked was David Cameron coming out on the steps and quitting his job. If only we could get that idea across to the White House. If you are making decisions that almost no one agrees with it might be time to pack it in.

We don't have that kind of common sense on this side of the pond. While the FBI is trying to get senate approval for warrantless searches because they think the country if filled with “Lone Wolf” terrorists, the Obama administration is wearing out horses to let thousands of “refugees” into the nation. I'm just a Simple Ol’ Boy From Austin, but did I miss something here? FBI be like the solution to a bunch of lawless vagabonds coming here to destroy our rule of law is to tear up that rule of law. I think the word we’re looking for is, “Duh!”

The market will fall, the market will rise, and it makes you wonder just who was holding up this European Union. The Pound fell, but the British are willing to endure that if that's what it takes to regain sovereignty. When a lady can walk downtown in Levis without getting her head bashed in by Ali Baba they'll pay a few more shillings for a pint. Banksters around the world are in a tizzy. You'd think that a group of people, charged with the understanding of global economy would have more on the ball than Bonnie and Clyde.

The British are regaining sovereignty. It will be interesting to see. This last time Europe had an argument like this Hitler installed his version of the European Union. We’ll get to see how the “have nots” in the EU fare without the safety net of the Pound. God help them if the Germans bolt. Think of this. What do you think would happen if Texas were to suddenly become sovereign and take all its gold, oil, tech and Porterhouse steaks back to Austin? Yeah, sovereignty is a beautiful thing.

Neighbors

Getting to know the neighbors can be daunting. It seems that in the poorer neighborhoods people mingle a lot better than they do in the more affluent ones, and I've been in both. Berry Creek, in Georgetown, Texas was the upper end of the top end. Even the “garden homes” would shame most of the homes in my native Killeen. Now, to be sure, I was certified white trash. I grew up in a little town in Texas called Simmonsville, later absorbed by Killeen. We were so poor that the people on welfare were the cream of society because they had a check. That put them right up there with the civil service in the eyes of the little town.

So, as luck would have it, I won the real estate lottery, and the Beverly Hillbillies moved to Berry Creek. We ended up owning three homes there. My hand would literally shake as I wrote the checks for the mortgages each month. Our homes sat on the golf course, the main house, a recreation of Elvis’s Graceland,was positioned on the twelfth green. I was a gold member of the Berry Creek Country Club, with unlimited golf privileges. Please note that I can't hit a golf ball, but I can drink beer, and drive a golf cart like nobody’s business.

We had NO contact with the neighbors. Their shorts were in such a knot that it amazed me they could go to the bathroom. Since my roots were back in Killeen, and my friends couldn't afford the gas for the fifty mile trip to what was basically North Austin, nobody came a calling. When we went to the club for dinner we sat at a large, round table. No one sat near us. We were the turds in the swimming pool. (They didn't like us going to the pool, either!)

As luck would have it, I ended up divorced, living in the main house alone. I had this friend in L.A. Lance had met me on YouTube. I admired his videos. Lance was, well is, a video genius. He did it all. He used Final Cut Pro, and was a wiz at blending story, sound, and special effects. He had this dream of coming to Texas. One day I got a call. He wasn't COMING to Texas, he as IN Texas. Right down the street at the bus station. He had no idea how hot it was here so I had to rush to pick him up before he had a heat stroke. Poor guy showed up in a leather jacket during the summer. Hey, he's from SoCal, ok?

After he settled in we hung out on the porch and got to know each other. Now, this guy is like Bob Denver from Gilligan’s Island, complete with the Dixie Cup sailor’s cap, and he even played a flute. My son, and his wife, Jackie moved in along about this time, and we had a rather comfortable little group. About a week or so after he arrived, Lance received a package that he had mailed himself from California prior to hopping on the bus. Several quart jars of his “prescription” to help him get through the summer. After we saw him unpack we just waited for the cops to show up. I'll never understand how Lance got away with that. While I, myself, do not partake, suffice to say everybody else did, including the cat, and in short order the house on the twelfth green became the Yellow Submarine. This was a very laid back group. We didn't mind that the neighbors didn't have anything to do with us, we barely noticed that there were other HOUSES in the area.

One Sunday afternoon we were setting up a cookout on the back lawn. We put meat on the grill, I got beer, wine, and cheese, and we commenced our own private party as the golfers played through. My son and I looked up, and here came Lance with a water pipe I'd gotten from Afghanistan. And brothers and sisters, he was open for business. My son rushed over and let him know that he WAS in Texas, and law enforcement frowned on such action, whereupon, Lance corrected the situation by returning to the house, and emerging with a bowl. Not the bowl you think, but a real BOWL! A soup bowl you could put an entire serving of Campbell’s soup into. Like the Lord said, “Filled and pressed down!”

As the golfers played through, Lance fired up, and enjoyed the view. I jumped off into a pitcher of martinis, and I must admit, the view wasn't bad. As luck would have it, it wasn't long before the smell permeated the atmosphere, and drew the attention of two rather distinguished looking gentlemen who drove their cart right up onto the lawn to inquire as to just what did wet think we were doing. They  had a bottle! Well, there was no getting out of this. Lance, being Lance, simply showed them the bowl, and then astounded me by asking them if they'd like to “hang out!” As I tried to construct my legal defense, to my amazement, they sat down. Lance rolled a “Fat Boy,” and passed it around.

Then another golf cart showed up . . . and another . . . and another, until we had a lawn full if people I'd never met in my eight years at Berry Creek. There was also a traffic jam on the twelfth, with a couple of carts just going in circles. The course Marshall didn't mind because he was sitting with Lance! The day melted into the evening, and soon it was gone, as if it never happened. Lance went home after that, but he left his mark. I go there now and then, pause in front of the house on Oak Tree Drive, and wonder what became of all those people. What I do know is on one Sunday afternoon, for a little while, we were all neighbors.

Hillary Clinton is a Gangster

Hillary Clinton is a gangster! Please take the time to watch this video. This election is the perfect dichotomy. On one side is a businessman, flawed to be sure, but someone who has tried and failed, tried again and succeeded, made mistakes, owned up to them and moved on, and his biggest flaw is telling it like it is to millions of cheering Americans. Opposing him is a sleazy, lying, murderous, allegedly bi-sexual (Yoko Ono) who rides on the dubious coat tails of the most criminal-minded, adulterous president in history.  Supporting Hillary is an entitled segment of the population that can't even spell the word, “Constitution,” much less understand its meaning. This is the situation we find ourselves in today!

Travelgate, White Water, Monica, Benghazi, and thousands of emails give us enough scandal to wreck FDR’s presidency, yet Hillary gets a pass! All Richard Nixon did was tell a lie, and monkey with a tape recorder. Jimmy Carter had “sin in his heart.” Yet Hillary is a viable candidate, while skirting indictment. El Chapo would make a better choice! Hillary Clinton doesn't have the expertise to be a divorce lawyer, yet  she wants to run the country, and all the patrons down at the food stamp office are lining up to give her just that.

From 1989  forward America has been controlled by a dynasty. From the moment George H. W. Bush raised his right hand on the Capitol steps until now the Bush/Clinton machine has pulled the strings of government with only one comical interruption. The ballot for all those years was like a Chinese menu where no matter what you chose it all tasted the same. Obama made no difference to this arrangement at all. Hillary bowed out of her first presidential run to allow Obama to surge forward, and even then assumed the office of Secretary of State in order to keep her hand firmly on the wheel until she could make the final lunge for power. When she stepped down from that office it was all according to plan. Donald Trump threw a monkey wrench in that plan.

Trump rose above all of his opponents, and one by one they all stepped aside. Even the formidable Ted Cruz pulled out after rigging at least two primaries, and bringing out a story that at some time in the past Trump’s wife had a spread in a magazine. The press felt it expedient to point out that the lady was not a natural born American while conveniently ignoring the fact that she was a perfect example of the very point her husband was making about legal immigration, and the fulfillment of the American Dream!

It has been said that Trump never gives specifics about his plans for the country. He doesn't have to. He gives goals! He wants to stop the flow of illegals across our border, bring jobs back to this country, make us safe from attack, and re-enforce the Constitution. He is a real estate broker. When he goes out onto a vacant lot, and decides to build a hotel he doesn't have to know how to mix concrete because he knows where to find people who do, and that’s exactly how he will build that wall! He may not even have to build a wall. He may decide to beef up the border patrol with authority to where all we’ll need is a sign on the border and men with guns standing beside it. He may embargo Mexico to the point that not one bottle of Tequila will cross that border until Mexico gets it right! As opposed to this Hillary has one plan; to perpetuate that dynasty which began in 1989.

Mr. Trump has been called a Narcissist. Well, as for myself, I'll go for a confident Narcissist way before I'll vote for a psychopathic liar banking on eight years of the same while grooming her daughter for the Oval Office. Swat them bees! Y'all didn't see that one coming, huh. What did you think Chelsea was going to do in her middle age, write a cook book? This cycle must be broken. This has to come to an end. The president of Mexico said that if Donald Trump is elected he will order all the Mexicans back home. That implies that he must have ordered them up here in the first place. Think about it. A country so bad that the president wants his people to leave. And all the other so-called “world leaders” who are “nervous” about the possibility of a Trump presidency. Their interests are not our interests. These are simple observations. The main simple fact still remains: Hillary Clinton is a gangster.

The Way of the Gun

The way of the gun is as American as mom’s apple pie. I read with interest the article by Bill the Butcher which compares the shootings in Orlando with the tower shootings in Texas circa 1966. It provoked thought in me for three reasons; one, all of you that read Bill’s writing know him to be a man of reason. His is the way of thought, and one may only emerge victorious from such matches as are found in contests of logic if they possess the preeminent superiority of reason. But a very few of us remember darker times in the Simple Ol’ Boy’s past. A past ruled by the way of the gun.

In those days the way of the gun was eschewed by most, but some contests were not to be won if one was not knowledgeable of that particular dark way. In reading Bills piece, I thought to detect an echo from that time. Secondly, and of greater importance to his readers, Bill made it clear that by his lights, Muslim people are prone to either forcing their ideology, or way of life if you will, on others at the point of a gun, or are instead guilty of indifference to the victims of those who do so. Lastly, by a quirk of fate, mybrother and I were both there at the hour of the shooting at the University of Texas, both of us missing a more fateful appointment by bare minutes. I would like to submit a humbler thought on the comparison made by The Butcher by the addition of two other famous Texas shooters.

The drawing of the three: roughly three years prior to Whitman’s rampage on an infamous day in November 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald fired shots from an upper floor window in the Dallas Book Depository killing one man, our president, beloved of many in this nation, and wounding Governor John Connally, feared by many of the same. His state of mind? Cold, calculating, a true shooter’s state of mind. Twenty-five years after the tower shootings a certifiably mental patient drove his car into the Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and upon exiting his vehicle shot and killed 23 people. The shooter, George Hennard’s state of mind? Chaotic, fragmented, a shooter who only got his kill count by killing unarmed, helpless sheep (apologies to those who count among the lost one who was dear). In each case, it bears pointing out that the victims were unarmed, and helpless due to an unannounced attack. Kills such as these lack honor, and therein do I find the ONLY similarity. In Oswald’s case the shooter was an assassin, trained for his mission, and part of a larger plan, Oswald was doing a job. I know it, and I know Bill knows. In Whitman’s case, he was a combat seasoned veteran, but one with an awful thing growing in his head; it cannot be said that he knew what he was doing, but  Hennard did! I knew his therapist, and believe me, those who knew him best were worried about his fascination withguns, and his erratic behavior

If anyone was responsible for the shooting in Orlando, or Connecticut, or Columbine or, take your pick, it’s the police. Ever since the war on drugs our nation’s police use a template for prevention that resembles the optimism of that person ahead of you in line at the convenience store buying lottery tickets. They’ll continue to explain the logic of it well after you have lost interest. Am I bashing the cops? Well…yeah. I mean just look at the solution most of them have for mass shootings: disarm everybody. Huh? Now, I have walked the way of the gun since before I could vote. I stay hard, and I stay ready. I know that Bills reason is superior to mine, but I also know he keeps a Smith near to hand. I don’t believe the answer is the expulsion of Muslim people, nor the barring of their way to citizenship. I think rather that we should vette them more thoroughly, and watch them more closely. And, I think we should all keep our guns close, just in case.

Before There Were Twin Towers There Was Only One

Before there were Twin Towers, there was only one. On August 1, 1966 Charles Whitman decided to kill his wife, mother, and fourteen strangers just because.  If you go looking for motives in this kind of thing you'll go as crazy as the shooter, because there isn't any. He did leave a note explaining that even he didn't understand the forces driving him. He papered the town with hot checks purchasing an M1 Carbine, two magazines, and six boxes of bullets. He also bought gun cleaning solvent (go figure.) He then bought a 12 gauge shotgun at Sears. He then lugged all this firepower up the stairs of the University of Texas Tower steps, killing as he went, positioning himself and beginning his assault on the student body.

The first shot killed Claire Wilson, who was eight months pregnant, and then killed her boyfriend as he stooped to help her. It was all downhill from there. After about twenty minutes Whitman began to receive return fire from police and citizens! This is important, people. You see, back in the day, a rifle or shotgun in the rear window of a pickup truck was a common sight. While the first bit of his rampage went fairly well, he was soon hard pressed to stick his head up long enough to aim, and his body count dropped accordingly. He was restricted to firing through water spouts, which severely limited his choice of targets. Three officers, and a civilian dispatched Whitman, and the rest is left to history.

I want you to note that there was not a great cry throughout the land to disarm Texas after this. In the Good Old Boy philosophy it was understood that guns weren't the problem, the fool on the tower was. There was a tumor on Whitman’s brain, and every doctor involved came to a different conclusion. Charles Whitman was bat-crap crazy. He didn't have an ideology, he wasn't driven by a specific hate, or philosophy, he was just crazy. He was a pure natural born killer, driven to attain the largest body count possible before cashing in.

While Whitman’s Tower didn't substantially change a thing in Texas, the Twin Towers changed history. With the Patriot Act, the NSA, Homeland Security and all the rest, we all still stumble through the rubble of Ground Zero. Now we have the insane paradox of putting up with all these intrusions into our lives, and we have a president who won't even utter the phrase, “Radical Islam!” If there is no Radical Islam why do I have to board a plane carrying my shoes? Muslims have become a protected species in America, and they're not even cool about it. Just today I watched an Imam casually discussing killing homosexuals as being an act of mercy.

Now, I want you to contrast this; remember the civilians keeping Whitman’s head down? Well nobody kept Omar’s head down! He was in a “gun free zone.” No guns allowed, all but Omar’s, he had lots. That reasoning is just about the craziest thing I have ever heard. A very small minority uses guns to kill, and the solution is to disarm the population in the hope that an religious nut will give up on his plan when encountering a little resistance to purchasing a gun. Folks, I'm just a simple old boy from Austin, but did I miss something here? Fact: If one guy in that club had one gun Omar’s body count might have been much, much lower.

It's not very often that you can readily identify a threat. There was no way to profile Charles Whitman. He couldn't even profile himself. However, you can profile radical Islam. You can slice out a segment of the population that is likely to commit a violent crime. You can have these people leave. Oh, and don't get me started. The FBI! Omar was “on their radar!” Better turn the power up on the radar boys, this one got by. And Omar’s father? “I do not believe my son was radicalized!” You mean more radicalized than you, goat man? We, as Americans, have given up a whole bunch of our freedom just to board a plane, isn't it time that Ali Babba give up some? Maybe time to go back to the old country? Maybe time to tear down all those Mosques here. Maybe time to meet that Imam touting killing people based of his twisted view of life in a parking lot and “enlighten” him a bit?

We, in Texas, handled Whitman, and his legacy far differently than the rest of the country handled the events of 9/11. We applied common sense, guts, and more than a little understanding of bad guys with guns. . The University of Texas Tower, today, is a place of tranquility, where students, once again pass without a second thought. The shadow of the World Trade Center still dominates the New York skyline because they never resolved it. They brought the perpetrators right to our shores to finish the job! Look at Texas, people. Before the Twin Towers there was only one!