Fortunately, I no longer board a lot of airplanes because if I did, it would really piss me off that after a teenager flew to Hawaii in the wheel well of a jetliner, a spokesperson for the TSA said that nobody can be expected to prevent a kid from hopping over the fence at the San Jose Airport in the middle of the night.

I suppose that would hold true even if the kid happened to be a jihadist carrying a bomb in his backpack. Keep that in mind the next time you’re doffing your jacket, belt and shoes and being X-rayed, by the same jerks who are only too happy to disarm you of your nail clippers, toothpaste and shampoo, after you’ve been shuffling along in a serpentine line for an hour or so.

Those people like Tom Steyer who get to pretend they’re sane because they get to call themselves a multi-syllabic word like “environmentalists” when the rest of us know they are simply mental cases, are insisting that the Keystone pipeline would destroy every state through which it would pass. But at the same time, they ignore the fact that Canadian oil is already coming south, but instead of traveling safely through a pipeline, it is coming down by train and truck. That being the case, wouldn’t you think they would prefer the option of a nice clean pipeline? Of course that would be the case if they were rational. But because these arrogant schmucks are divorced from reality, all they care about is winning, even if it harms the very thing they allegedly care the most about; namely, the environment.

Speaking of which, I am not one of those people who ever thought cattle rancher Cliven Bundy was another Nathan Hale, but, in spite of his racist rant, I remain far more sympathetic to the side he represents, the individual standing up to the federal government, than I am of his opponents.

Like everyone else who has followed the story, I am aware that the feds own 84% of Nevada. They also own large portions of Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, California, Alaska, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Wyoming, in amounts ranging from 36% to 69%. The question is, why. Aside from national parks, military bases and a few fancy buildings in Washington, D.C., why should the federal government lay claim to a single acre of the United States? As I see it, they have no more business or constitutional authority to claim it than I have.

Getting back to Bundy, who obviously should have stuck to a subject he can talk about, which would be cattle, I know there are people who regard him as a scofflaw because there have been court judgments made against him in the past. But, thanks to super-duper scofflaws like Obama, Holder and Harry Reid, it’s difficult for most of us to take that argument too much to heart.

One could say that Harry Reid, who has led the condemnation of Mr. Bundy, has feet of clay, but under closer analysis, it appears they only look like clay. They have an aroma far more reminiscent of a pig sty.

In the case of Bundy’s ranch, Reid has been hip-deep in a land scam that involves his son Rory and his former senior advisor, the current head of the Bureau of Land Management, Neil Kornze. The way it works is that Reid makes a deal with, say, the Chinese, making public land available at a reduced price so long as lawyer Rory Reid gets to handle the pricey paperwork, in the meantime getting Kornze to use his heavily-armed BLM thugs to push people like Bundy off the designated property.

Those who are naïve or just plain knuckleheads will say, “But what about those federal court orders?” To which I say, “Who the heck do you think gets to appoint those judges in the first place?” Sometimes, black robes are a better disguise for villains than black masks.

In a great many political races now taking place, liberal incumbents who have never served in the military are being contemptuous of their opponents who are veterans, and I suggest they should pay a heavy price on Election Day.

How dare some damn ex-ambulance chaser dare to claim that what they do is essential, but defending our nation on the battlefield isn’t even a real job, as a couple of them have suggested!

Now I’m not one of those people who believe that military veterans necessarily make great politicians. The evidence in the form of Charley Rangel and the three Johns – Murtha, McCain and Kerry –is pretty compelling in the opposite direction. Secretary of State Kerry, in 2006, speaking for liberals everywhere, said that smart people, referring no doubt to his own offspring, go to college and make something of themselves, whereas other people’s sons go to Iraq.

Even if George W. Bush wasn’t another George Washington, Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan, it should never be forgotten that he was the man who kept Kerry, along with Al Gore, out of the Oval Office. For that alone, his birthday should be a national holiday.