The ongoing battle between the NRA and high schoolers may soon be over. A new compromise has been proposed that would allow shooting inside school buildings, but only with a special license and during a specified season.
“I think that people of good conscience can come together on this issue,” says moderate Neil Gradeaker, founder of the #letsmeethalfway movement. “Young anti-gun activists want schools to be gun-free zones. The NRA wants many people in schools to have guns. The license idea splits it down the middle.”
According to the compromise measure, anyone could apply for a special permit to discharge a firearm within a school building, just as many citizens now obtain hunting licenses. While it’s expected that primarily teachers, coaches, school nurses, janitors and lunch ladies would get the licenses, parents, former students and other visitors who might hope to be the “good guy with the gun” would also be eligible.
“The only current students who would be eligible are seniors who have demonstrated responsibility, have no record of misbehavior and have maintained a GPA of 3.0 or higher,” Gradeaker reveals. “The season would begin in mid-October, when students have had time to settle in and run through early April.”
Gradeaker came up with the middle-of-the-road approach because he was tired of seeing his Facebook friends argue back and forth about gun control.
“It always came down to, ‘You’re stupid,’ ‘No, YOU’RE stupid!’” he explains.
Not everyone agrees that the compromise is a good idea.
“Having a ‘hunting season’ for school shooters is not the solution,” fumed one teenage gun-control activist.
Some Second Amendment crusaders are also taking potshots at the proposal.
“Gun owners shouldn’t need a special license to protect kids on school property,” one declared. “And who’s supposed to protect them before the season begins and after it ends?”
Beloved cartoon hunter Elmer Fudd
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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In the graphic novel Night Cage, vampires overrun a women’s prison–and to escape, four surviving inmates must fight their way through an army of the undead. Picture ‘Salem’s Lot meets Orange is the New Black.
Vampires take over a women’s prison in the spooky, steamy graphic novel Night Cage, Volume 2
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U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly set to establish his own private spy agency—and you can help come up with a catchy name for our leader’s new secret police.
“The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer—with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal—to provide the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals,” The Intercept reports.
“The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering ‘deep state’ enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.”
The President’s personal spy agency will likely have its own emblem, similar to that of the KGB, once run by Trump pal Vladimir Putin.
Blackwater is the shady mercenary outfit that played a key role in the occupation of Iraq. Its founder Prince already has a cozy relationship with Trump: his sister is controversial Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Trump’s personal spy agency will report only to the president and will be funded by wealthy donors. The Mission: Impossible-style secret agents won’t carry out operations against Russia. Instead, they’ll combat what Trump considers the “real” enemy: the CIA, NSA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and all of America’s other intelligence agencies. And, unlike the CIA, no law will prevent it from pursuing targets in the U.S.
In the beloved TV series “Get Smart,” agent Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) worked for a secret organization named Control.
All that Trump’s spanking new secret police is missing is a name. Below are some possibilities. Choose your favorite, or if none catch your fancy, come up with a suggestion of your own. We’ll send the most popular picks in this poll, plus readers’ three most catchy suggestions, to the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., where President Trump himself will make the final choice. (Note: KGB has already been taken).
Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin created an elite security force called the NKVD.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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WASHINGTON — To keep Donald Trump’s tax returns from the public, IRS officials are securing them in an impregnable safe in a locked room no one is allowed to enter. But a top expert in keeping dangerous documents out of the wrong hands says that doesn’t go nearly far enough.
“That safe should be encased in a hermetically sealed titanium vault,” said Herman Klausgrove, an advisor to the Vatican. “The vault should be placed in the cargo hold of a submarine and the doors to both the cargo hold and the sub welded shut. The submarine could then be scuttled in the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, with all records of the exact location shredded, then burned.”
THE MARIANA TRENCH, more than 7 miles deep, is literally the bottom of the sea.
Klausgrove is unquestionably the leading expert in the field. He is credited with concealing numerous books and manuscripts deemed unsafe for public consumption, many associated with the occult. These include Adolf Hitler’s personal copy of the notorious Oera Linda, said to contain powerful 4,000-year-old spells from Atlantis, and dubbed the Bible of the Third Reich.
Most recently, the expert deep-sixed the original copy of the Grand Grimoire, also known as the Red Dragon or the Gospel of Satan, purportedly written by Honorius of Thebes while possessed by Lucifer and discovered in the tomb of King Solomon. The Necromonicon-like book is chockful of blasphemous incantations, demon-raising rites and occult spells – including one potent enough to compel even a Pope submit to the Devil. While the age-old tome was long kept under lock and key in a secret Vatican archive, last year Pope Francis made the decision to hide it somewhere even safer.
THE GRAND GRIMOIRE, one of the most dangerous books on Earth
“The book is impervious to fire and even attempts to destroy it with acid and explosives have failed,” Klausgrove explained. “The only alternative was to put it somewhere it could never be found again.”
The crafty specialist refused to divulge anything about where he ferreted away the Grand Grimoire, but hinted that the public would be very surprised to learn the answer.
“Sometimes the trick is to hide an object in plain sight,” he said coyly.
Trump’s tax returns became a subject of controversy during the 2016 campaign, when unlike every other past presidential candidate, he refused to release them. At the time, the flamboyant real estate tycoon vowed that he would let voters see them once he was elected, but soon after he was inaugurated, a spokesman declared that the returns would never see the light of day.
CANDIDATE Trump swore that he would release his tax returns if elected.
There has been renewed interest in the President’s taxes after he pushed through a tax reform bill that could cut the money he pays Uncle Sam by an estimated $1 billion. Reporters have been eager to take a peek at the forbidden documents, one calling it “the Holy Grail of White House reporting.” But the IRS has redoubled efforts to keep them from the public eye.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen recently told Politico magazine, “It’s in a locked cabinet in a locked room that nobody’s in. You’ll need a key to the room and the cabinet to get it. We’re in the process of turning that cabinet into a safe.”
But Klausgrove warns that a determined safe cracker might retrieve the documents.
“If the contents of those returns came to light, the fallout might be as devastating as reading aloud from any of the unholy texts I’ve hidden over the years.”
READING aloud from a forbidden book bound in human skin can have unforeseen consequences, as characters learn in the movie The Evil Dead.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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NEW YORK CITY — Anti-manspreading crusaders aren’t taking the problem sitting down. They’ve launched a nationwide campaign to snuff out the rude male behavior—by training guys to sit with their ankles primly crossed.
“In etiquette classes, properly raised young ladies are taught to sit with their ankles crossed—never with their knees spread wide, which is of course quite vulgar,” explained retired etiquette instructor Clarice Bowdlake, who spent her 30-year career at a girls’ school for manners. “It is time we teach men to do the same. There is no reason why even the most uneducated man cannot learn to sit with the grace and decorum of Queen Elizabeth.”
There is an epidemic of manspreading on public transportation, experts say.
NEW YORK CITY — Manspreading is when a man sits with his knees spread brazenly apart, particularly on a bus or subway seat when doing so takes up extra space. The inconsiderate conduct has become a bane of female commuters, who complain that they end up either having to stand or sit squeezed uncomfortably to one side.
The training program is the brainchild of activist Courtney Featherstein, who has pushed through numerous ordinances regulating manspreading across the country. Her organization Close Your Legs has hired dozens of expert instructors like Bowdlake to lead classes in 20 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and D.C.
“Manspreading is more than just an affront to basic civility, it’s a primary symbol of male privilege,” Featherstein declared. “Men use it as a way to project dominance.”
Manspreading is used to communicate power, as in this case where two leaders vie to out-manspread each other.
The two-hour training sessions, which cost $140, don’t just cover sitting. Male enrolees are also shown the proper way to hold a teacup—one pinky extended—curtsey, avoid burping and other basics.
Many of the students are progressive men hoping to learn more sensitive behavior and earn points with their girlfriends. Others have been sent to the classes by forward-looking businesses that cough up the fee and give employees time off to attend. For now, participation is voluntary, but Featherstein hopes that one day soon, high schools will make such classes mandatory for all young males.
“I’d like to see it become as routine as taking a driver’s ed course,” she said.
American men need to be educated on the important issue, the activist revealed. Stunningly, many still don’t even know what manspreading is.
Admits Nick R., 35, of Bangor, Maine, “When I saw a headline with the word ‘manspreading’ in it last year, I thought it was some kind of new gay bedroom move, and I skipped the article.”
But ignorance and homophobia aren’t the only obstacles to stamping out manspreading. So-called “men’s rights” organizations have been whining that the whole movement is anti-male.
“I’d love to sit with my knees pressed together on a bus or subway, but we men have something between our legs we call testicles,” insisted Jerry Nogland, president of the Male Liberation Brigade. “These women are trying to create a society in which all men are effete wusses, like in that movie Zardoz. It’s not right.”
In the bizarre 1974 sci-fi film Zardoz, Sean Connery plays the last remaining masculine human on the planet.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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In growing numbers, foreign terrorists are refusing to set foot in America, because they’re scared stiff of being blown away in a mass shooting!
“They think the United States is simply too dangerous and are requesting assignments in countries with fewer guns,” a frustrated ISIS recruiter acknowledged. “They are opting to serve in places like England and Denmark where mass murder with semi-automatic rifles is less frequent.”
Some of those who’ve said no to coming to America are battle-hardened killers accustomed to risking death in war-torn Syria. They resent being branded as “cowards” by other terrorists.
“I do not mind dying as a martyr while carrying out an attack on infidels, I look forward to that day with joy,” claimed an ISIS member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But I wish to carry out a suicide bombing, or whatever Allah wills, on a day that we have planned. I do not want to have my head blown off by some random American crazy man.”
A whopping 378 people have been killed or wounded in the U.S. by mass shooters so far in 2017, according to Mass Shooting Tracker. The weapon of choice for many of the trigger-happy madmen is the popular AR-15. One reason that other western countries have failed to rack up as impressive a body count as the U.S. is that such military-type assault weapons aren’t as easily available, experts say.
“Our gun homicide rate is 20 times that of Australia, which has firmer firearms regulations,” revealed a law enforcement source. “It’s no wonder that foreign terrorists are jittery about visiting here.”
But ISIS honchos show little sympathy toward terrorists who are chicken about ducking bullets in America.
“You have to understand, many of our members are weary of fighting. In America, they expect to enjoy a peaceful, relaxing period lasting months or years before they receive orders to stage an attack,” the recruiter explained. “They want to experience all the creature comforts of your corrupt western society: air conditioning, shopping malls, gentlemen’s clubs, a Starbucks on every corner. All that without any risk of death in a mass shooting?
“The leadership has been very patient until now, but if volunteers do not begin to show more grit when it comes to assignments in the U.S., heads will roll—and yes, I do mean that literally.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to pass a bill easing restrictions on gun silencers, the International Society of Gentlemen Assassins is hailing the move–and is asking for equal treatment for other tools of the trade, such as cyanide capsules and poison darts!
“We’re pleased as punch that the government is taking action on silencers, which are so helpful in making it hard to tell where your shots are coming from,” said Dan Castlewick, a spokesperson for the prestigious 80-year-old organization. “Now is the time to make other essential weapons easier to obtain and reduce the hassle of using tried-and-true assassination techniques.”
The I.S.G.A. wants the law relaxed on the following items:
Razor-Edged Bowler Hats
Cyanide capsules
Poison Darts
Feeding to Piranhas
Cattle Stunners (Captive Bolt Pistols)
Car Bombs
Garottes
Tarantulas
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LOYALTY OATH: Saying the Pledge is already required in schools across America.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Good news for patriots! A new federal law will make it mandatory for every worker in America to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each work day.
The Defense of Liberty Act will require companies to allot two minutes every morning for workers in offices and on factory floors to salute a regulation-size flag and declare their loyalty to the United States. Furthermore, before any major event such as a company retreat, picnic or baseball game, the National Anthem must be played. Firms that fail to enact the policy face a stiff penalty of up to $3,500 per day.
The bill is still in committee, but lawmakers are confident that there will be enough votes for it to pass both the House and Senate, and that super-patriotic President Donald Trump will sign it into law.
“In the current environment, many Americans don’t feel comfortable exhibiting their love for this country. This law makes it safe to be a patriot again,” says conservative activist Newton Lartley, a strong advocate for the legislation. “When you hear all your coworkers saying the Pledge alongside you, just like in elementary school, you know that it’s OK to be proud of our flag.”
Not surprisingly, many ACLU types are up in arms, protesting that the act would violate the “rights” of citizens who aren’t all that patriotic. But supporters say that our number one priority should be encouraging devotion to America, the land of liberty.
Notes one Republican lawmaker, “It’s not asking a lot for Americans to, once a day, show their gratitude to this great land by confirming that we are indeed ‘one nation, under God, invisible.’”
FLAG-LOVING Donald Trump will go down in history as our most patriotic President, if allegations that he is a Russian agent are disproved.
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KEY WEST – A Florida man who fearlessly fired his rifle into Hurricane Irma is being hailed as a hero, after shooting down a pair of great white sharks that were spiraling toward a mom and her toddlers.
Edward “Slim” Wilderghast, 61, a lifelong NRA member and avid hunter, hit one of the enormous sea creatures in the heart and nailed the second directly between the eyes, authorities confirm.
Neighbor Kelly Burenwick, whose mobile home had been reduced to splinters by the storm, recalls sheltering her 3-year-old twin girls with her body as the terrifying predators tumbled toward them through the air, mouths agape.
“The sharks were coming straight for us. I thought we were goners for sure,” said Ms. Burenwick, 29. “I told Rose and Abigail, ‘Close your eyes, girls.’ Then out of nowhere I heard gunshots. I looked up and there on his roof was our neighbor Mr. Wilderghast with his rifle. We owe him our lives.”
Hurricane Irma was one of the strongest storms in recorded history. Newspapers reported sightings of seagulls, squids, tuna, sharks and other creatures being swept up by the Category 5 hurricane as it raked across the Caribbean and bore down on the Florida peninsula.
A short time before Irma struck Florida, two men posted a Facebook event page encouraging Americans to shoot at the hurricane as a gesture of defiance, to “prove to Irma that we shoot first.” As many as 80,000 gun enthusiasts expressed interest in participating. That led the Sheriff’s Office to issue a stern warning: “DO NOT shoot weapons at Irma. You won’t make it turn around and it will have very dangerous side effects.”
SIGHTINGS of sharks and other fish blown aloft by Irma were widespread.
“I didn’t hear about the police telling folks not to shoot,” Wilderghast explained. “If I had, I would never have loaded Bessie and gone up on my roof. I just thought it was the patriotic thing to do.”
Wilderghast, a former rodeo trick-shooter, made the incredible shots with his Remington 700 AAC at about 300 yards, having a matter of seconds to account for factors such as wind speed and air currents. Killing the second shark was more difficult, because his line of sight was blocked by an airborne doghouse.
“I had to wait for just the right moment and shoot so the bullet ricocheted off a wok that was flying around and hit the shark in the brain,” he said.
FEMA official Larry Utell calls the incident highly unusual.
“I’ve seen some pretty fancy shooting in my day, but that takes the cake,” he marveled. “There are probably fewer than six men in the world who could have made that shot.”
Remarkably, Wilderghast isn’t the only gunslinger who used good old-fashioned American firepower to save lives during the hurricane. A Texas man on vacation in the British Virgin Islands used his six-shooter to kill three electric eels that were flung ashore by the massive storm.
DON’T try this at home: Shooting at a hurricane is highly risky, experts say.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The statues of 13 Confederate war heroes have come alive to seek revenge on the living, according to horrified paranormal investigators.
At least eight deaths and 36 sword and cannon injuries have been attributed to the golem-like figures, since their removal from public parks and town squares. The victims have primarily been liberal activists who had pushed for the removal of the controversial monuments, but the take-no-prisoners statues mow down anyone who stands in their way. Even an ice cream vendor was trampled to death when he inadvertently blocked the path of the mounted statue of General Robert E. Lee as the frightening figure galloped down the sidewalk.
“These entities are very, very angry,” said psychic researcher Ted Luebeck. ” We’re asking for the public’s help in tracking the statues down before they do more harm.”
Community organizer Margaret Fisling fell victim to a 102-year-old statue of General Stonewall Jackson as she was erecting an “Impeach Donald Trump” lawn sign outside her Charlotte home. Her husband Keith watched in helpless horror as the marble menace bore down on the 45-year-old woman, sword waving.
“First, we heard the eerie sound of ‘Dixie’ whistling over the wind,” said Fisling. “When we looked up we saw the statue, which we recognized from protest marches, charging straight us. I dove behind our garden gnome, but Maggie couldn’t get out of the way in time. Gen. Jackson’s horse knocked her down, then after about 50 feet, he turned around. He pointed his saber, galloped forward at full speed and sliced off her head off. It was like something out of a horror movie.”
Authorities were initially skeptical of the far-fetched story, until police discovered horse tracks on the scene and residue consistent with pigeon droppings.
Since May, scores of monuments honoring Confederate generals, as well as Jefferson Davis and the judge who ruled in favor of slavery in the Dredd Scott decision, have been removed from cities in North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and other states. While some have found new homes in museums, or as lawn ornaments for Civil War buffs, most have been shipped for temporary housing at warehouses. The 13 that sprang to life were all kept at the Old Times Warehouse and Antique Shop on the outskirts of Charlotte, according to investigator Luebeck.
REMOVAL of statues of Confederate greats like the beloved General Robert E. Lee has sparked a nationwide debate.
A statue of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who became an organizer of the Klu Klux Klan after the war, was the first to go missing from the storage facility, on August 16.
“That morning, I was wheeling in the latest addition, some colonel who fought in the Battle of Bull Run, when I found the spot where the Forrest statue had been gathering dust for months was empty,” said warehouse employee Stan Beasby. “At first, we figured it had been stolen, but it was funny because that statue weighs over 3,500 pounds. Who would have thought these guys have been marching and riding straight out of here?”
Over the following several nights, the statues of other legendary soldiers went on the lam, as well as a bust of General P.G.T. Beauregard that’s believed to have hopped to freedom. Paranormal experts can’t explain how the statues, most chiseled out of solid stone or made of bronze, and have no joints, are moving about. However, they do have a theory about the supernatural mechanism that has animated them.
“The warehouse also holds old store mannequins, junk from amusement park haunted houses, and figures from a wax museum in New Orleans that shut down last year,” Luebeck revealed.
“Back in 1988, a group of college students carried out a ‘voodoo’ ceremony that briefly brought some of the wax figures alive for two days, including one of Lizzie Borden. There were several serious injuries before they were put down with a blowtorch. We believe it’s conceivable that the surviving wax figures somehow ‘infected’ the Confederate statues.”
STATUES rarely come to life outside of movies like the 1963 Ray Harryhausen classic “Jason and the Argonauts.”
While baffled police race to track down the missing monuments, dozens of self-proclaimed “monster hunters” have converged on the area to put a stop to the killing spree. But some proud southerners profess sympathy for the hard-charging symbols of the South. And they reject any connection between their idols and slavery or racism.
“It’s not a racial thing,” insisted Beau Castland of the organization Keep Your Yankee Hands Off Our Heritage. “The media doesn’t point this out, but only one of the victims was black. Four were white, two were Asian Americans and one was a visitor from Samoa.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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WASHINGTON — You can live like a king, even if you don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of — by tricking your brain into thinking you’re rich!
“Poverty is just a state of mind, as Dr. Ben Carson recently said,” according to Revis Washington, author of the upcoming book, Think Yourself Rich. “A medieval peasant who had all the things a ‘poor’ American has today, like indoor plumbing, would feel that he was on top of the world. And imagine how a Neanderthal man would react to a simple potato chip sandwich or a cozy cardboard shelter. It’s all relative. The government doesn’t need anti-poverty programs. The mind is a far more powerful tool.”
A few easily learned mental tricks that Washington calls “mind jujitsu” are all you need to be wealthy inside your head.
“You’re essentially brainwashing yourself out of poverty,” the author explained.
Here, from the expert, are five great Jedi-like mind moves you can use to achieve instant mental wealth:
REINVENT YOUR DINING EXPERIENCE – When you are eating cold scrambled eggs and government cheese, close your eyes and visualize fine beluga caviar and gourmet brie.
REDEFINE YOUR SURROUNDINGS — A rat is only a “rat” if you choose to see it as one. In your mind, transform your scampering house guests into playful squirrels.
RECONCEPTUALIZE TRANSPORTATION — Don’t think “We’re living in our car.” Tell your brain that you and your five children are on a fun road trip through the south of France.
RETHINK FASHION — Pretend those ripped and threadbare clothes are the latest chic look in Europe. Picture a skeletal model sporting your duds on a runway in Milan.
REJECT MODERN MEDICINE — Instead of fretting about not being able to afford antibiotics for your family, imagine that you are trying to beef up your immune systems the natural way.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this article by C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of news satire, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
C. Michael Forsyth is the author of "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in The Adventure of the Spook House,""The Blood of Titans," "Hour of the Beast" and "The Identity Thief." He is a Yale graduate and former senior writer for The Weekly World News
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