Wild Pigs Divert My Attention from LSU's Disastrous Loss to Texas A&M

It’s Saturday evening at Lake Mary, Mississippi, and my family has congregated around our big-screen TV to watch LSU play Texas A&M in College Station. It’s a big game: LSU is ranked Number 8 in the national polls, and the Aggies are rated Number 14. Neither team has lost a Southeast Conference game.

I am filled with a sense of well-being. Loved ones are gathered around me. Cold beer is in the refrigerator, and we have plenty of game-time snacks. I adjust my Lazy Boy recliner to a comfortable semi-prone position.

All goes well in the first half, and LSU shows good prospects of beating the insufferable Aggies. Then, my team falls apart. Three interceptions and three missed field goals attest to a Tiger meltdown. I prepare myself for a major case of the weekend blues. We’re running out of beer.

Then providence intervenes. The game camera affixed to a pecan tree alerts us to two feral hogs rooting about in our three-acre front yard. All distress about the ballgame vanishes, and two family members break out their rifles from our gun safe. Armed with a 30.06 and a 30-30, they creep down to my home’s ground level and start shooting.

Both pigs squeal and head for the brush. The smaller hog is mortally wounded but manages to travel about 50 yards before succumbing to her wounds. Two generations of family members with flashlights follow the blood trail and find the interloper. She is stone dead.

What to do with a dead feral hog? Family members truss it up to one of the steel girders that keep our living quarters above the annual spring flood waters. Then they field dress the pig, dividing it into hams, ribs, pork shoulders, and backstrap. 

The hog slayers ice down the meat in a large ice chest and call it a night. We learn that LSU lost to A &M by a score of 38-23, but nobody cares.

The next morning, I propose we take all the hog meat to a nearby game processing plant and turn it into pork chops, sausage, and dinner-size pork loins. I offer to foot the bill.

We vote, and everyone except me opts to process the hog on our kitchen counter. By two in the afternoon, our feral hog is parceled and tucked away in the freezer--about a hundred pounds of meat.

Feral hogs are a major nuisance in the rural South, where they tear up the landscape and destroy crops. People are allowed to hunt them year-around by day or night. 

Everyone I know who has eaten wild-pig meat tells me that the small porkers are delicious. Thus, I ended my weekend feeling good about my family's contribution to feral hog control. And I'm looking forward to eating a pig harvested in my own front yard.

Who cares who won the LSU-Texas A&M game?

Pay no attention to the North Koreans behind the curtain

 Ukraine’s war with Russia is nearing its third anniversary. So far, things have gone swimmingly. As one US Senator boasted, the United States has hired the Ukrainians to kill Russians and we don’t have to get our hands dirty. What’s not to like?

Everyone is lying about how many people have been killed, but some experts estimate the Russians have suffered half a million  casualties--both killed and wounded. Who knows how many Ukrainians have died, but surely the Russians are as efficient in the killing fields as the Ukrainians. It’s a fair estimate to say that one million people have been killed or maimed in this needless war, and at least 6 million Eastern Europeans are refugees.

I confess that I never learned to hate the Russians. Even as a child, when my second-grade teacher ordered me and my classmates to crawl under our desks for our periodic nuclear war drill, I couldn’t work up any animosity toward the Slavs.

My seven-year-old mind told me that the grown-ups had fucked things up somehow, and I figured some really smart person would get everything straightened out before I had to register for the draft. 

Indeed, the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union ended in 1991, and the Commies took President Reagan's advice and tore down the Berlin wall.

For a while, East-West relations improved, and some people envisioned a day when the old Soviet regime would join the global economy and embrace western values. Ukraine and other Soviet republics declared their independence, and a brighter world seemed just around the corner.

Then, in 2014, the Ukrainians elected a pro-Russian president, and the CIA engineered a tin-pot uprising that forced the poor schumk into exile.

The Russians, understandably alarmed, reclaimed Crimea as part of the Russian motherland partly because it had an important naval base in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. Most Crimeans were okay with that because they overwhelming voted to rejoin Russia.

Meanwhile, separatists in Eastern Ukraine fought a smoldering war for independence, and the US and the Ukrainian government became cozy friends.

Then, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and the Ukrainians beat them off with Western weaponry, notably the Javelin missile systems.

Since then, the US and the NATO countries have showered Ukraine with advanced killing machines--Abrams and Leopard tanks, Bradley Fighting vehicles, F-16 jets and anti-ship missiles.

In response, Russia strengthened its ties with China, Iran, and North Korea, and North Korean troops will soon be fighting the Ukrainians.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to escalate the Ukrainian conflict into a nuclear war, but Americans are not worried. In fact, we think our demented president and idiot vice president are doing a great job managing our international affairs.

What's the long game? Ukraine and its allies could recognize Russia's claims to the Donbas and Crimea and promise not to allow Ukraine to join NATO. That action would bring the war to an end.

Alternatively, we can allow this war to drag on at the expense of another million casualties until Ukraine's cities and infrastructure are pounded into rubble.

 Then we could dust off America's strategy in Vietnam and Afghanistan and simply declare victory and go home--perhaps leaving our tanks and armored vehicles on the Ukrainian steppes as a farewell gift to Ukrainian Presidents Zelensky and Putin.

Meanwhile, our government is distracting the donkey-brained American people with histrionic claims that Donald Trump is a fascist. We'll see how things work out.

Join he North Korean Army and see the world.

Progressive Democrats Despise Rural America and Don't Care Who Knows It

Kamala Harris's frenzied minions hate rural America and have written it off in their frantic campaign to put their addled candidate into the White House. In their fevered minds, the battle for control of America's soul is not a conflict between blue states and red streets; it's a war between Democratically run cities and the rural and small-town heartland.

It is true that the Dems tried to sell Tim Walz, Kamala's running mate, as a common-sense Midwesterner, but the hayseeds smoked him out as a buffoon who can't load a shotgun. They derisively mock him as "TamponTim," a moniker that may or may not be fair.

The progressive Dems showed their hand years ago when Obama referred to rural Americans as bitter rubes clinging to their religion and their guns, and Hillary referred to them sneeringly as "a basket of deplorables." 

Indeed, today's Democratic party bosses are much like the Russian Bolsheviks, whose idea of ideal proletarians were urban factory workers too dumb to realize they were being manipulated by their Communist overseers.

Robert Conquest, in his study of the Bolsheviks' ruthless suppression of the Russian peasants, wrote that Stalin considered the peasants to be mere "scum" and that Marx compared them to "a sack of potatoes."

The Soviet apparatchiks in Moscow simply could not understand the Russian peasantry--people who lived close to the land, dwelled in small, close-knit villages, and had a mystical devotion to their religion and Mother Russia. 

 

Thus, Stalin falsely defined the Russian kulaks as anti-revolutionary capitalists and deliberately starved millions of them to death. In Stalin's mind, Russian peasants were a basket of deplorables who should be wiped from the face of the earth.  One might say the Russian peasants were getting in the way of Stalin's politics of joy.

 In two weeks, the election will be over, and America will either return to sanity or the nation will descend into the mind-fuckery that brought the nation transgender school sports and Venezuelan drug gangs. 

 
If Americans are stupid enough to elect Kamala as president, then America is done. We will no longer be the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

If Kamala is sworn in as our nation's commander and chief, in my view, rural and small-town America will become more of a backwater than it already is--a land of rising mortality rates, drug dependecy, joblessness, and suicide.

But who cares? Kamala's fawning press corps refers to the people in the Heartland as "white Christian nationists, which, of course is a code word for fascists.

I'll have a word salad to go and a basket of deplorable fries..

Lazy College Professors are Voting for Lazy Kamala Harris

 "Kamala Harris," James Howard Kunstler pithily observed,  "was just pulled out of a hat, like a rabbit. And everybody involved knew she was a dud, a slow learner, inattentive, not well-educated, lazy, possibly high a lot of the time, self-medicating due to anxiety, insecurity, purposelessness."

Yet college professors overwhelmingly support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump for the presidency. According to an Inside Higher Education poll, 78 percent of college professors plan to vote for Harris on November 5th, while only 8 percent said they will vote for Trump. 

Why? Because a high percentage of college faculty members—like Kamala Harris—are lazy. 

Professors feel a kinship with Harris. Like Kamala, most professors speak gobbledegook, a lazy mode of speech, and they find the Vice President's incoherent word salads strangely comforting.

President Biden appointed Kamala as the border czar, but she was too lazy to act on the nation's southern border crisis. Her sloth reassures professors because many aren't doing any practical work themselves.

On college campuses across America, rigor and discipline have collapsed. Grade inflation is rampant because professors are lazy. It's too damn hard for an instructor to distinguish between an A exam paper and a B. It's easier to give every student an A grade. Even at Harvard, the nation’s most elite university, 80 percent of undergraduate students have an A- grade average.

Academic assessment in graduate programs is almost nonexistent. Most graduate students get A or B grades, and plagiarism is no longer a serious academic offense. Professors are too lazy to uphold academic standards.

Again, Harvard is an example. Harvard president Claudine Gay was accused of plagiarizing passages in her dissertation and three academic articles. Harvard investigated these allegations and cleared her of any intentional wrongdoing. After all, plagiarism is no longer an act of academic dishonesty. It's merely a sign of laziness, and laziness is not a sin in the culture of American higher education.

We should not be surprised to learn that lazy college professors support Kamala Harris, a lazy vice president who wants to become our lazy president.

Kamala wants to be president. How hard can the job be?

Guns are banned at the Texas State Fair. Thank God!

Texans can legally carry handguns, but some Texas venues still ban them. The Texas State Fair, which hosts millions of visitors every year, doesn’t allow people to bring firearms onto the fairgrounds.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tried overturning that ban, but the Texas Supreme Court upheld it. Thank God!

Many years ago, when I lived in Dallas, I had an unpleasant encounter at the Texas State Fair. I was standing in line to make a purchase (perhaps a Fletcher's Corny Dog), and a young Mexican woman was before me. She was accompanied by a small child. I think she was an immigrant because she didn't speak English.

Three men in line made racist remarks about her, calling her a wetback and making other derogatory comments.

I came to the woman’s defense, and soon, I was in a shouting match with these three bigots. All three men began hurling abuse at me. I remember they repeatedly called me a homosexual. In addition to being racists, they were homophobes.  Calling me gay was the worst thing they could think of to demean me.

I admit that my responses were no more appropriate. I began calling them white trash— the worst thing I could think of. I may have called them redneck white trash, which would’ve been gratuitously redundant.

I finally walked away and realized I had made a severe mistake by coming to the Hispanic women’s defense. I had triggered a confrontation that frightened her. She would’ve been better off had I said nothing.

Here’s my point. If my three antagonists had been armed, I think one of them would’ve shot me. And if I had been carrying a gun, I might have shot one of them--maybe all of them.

Americans have a Second Amendment right to own weapons, and several states allow people to carry concealed handguns, and even to wear them openly.

Mark Twain observed that the Constitution guarantees people the right to free speech, but most people have the good sense not to use it.

I feel the same way about handguns. In many states, people have a legal right to carry a pistol. Thank God, most citizens have the good sense not to avail themselves of it.

Urban crime is on the rise. Except for wealthy people who are protected by private security, everyone knows this is true. The day may come when it will make sense for law-abiding people to carry handguns, but that day has not yet arrived.

I’m glad the Texas Supreme Court upheld the State Fair’s firearms ban. If the time comes when people need to carry pistols to the State Fair, then that event should be canceled. Then where would I get my Fletcher's Corny Dog?

Hands off my corny dog, pilgrim.

Zelensky’s victory plan for defeating Russia could get us all killed

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States last week to pitch his victory plan for winning Ukraine’s war with Russia. Zelensky’s schedule was packed. He gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, spoke with former President Donald Trump, and met privately with President Joe Biden. 

Yet he still had time to campaign for the Democrats in Pennsylvania. Was the little soldier interfering with our presidential election to benefit Kamala Harris?

Zelinski’s victory plan has two components. First, he wants Ukraine admitted to NATO. Second, he insists that the Western allies allow him to attack the Russian motherland with advanced weapons systems, including long-range missiles acquired from the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said plainly that NATO membership in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war. Putin has also said that Russia might respond with nuclear weapons if Ukraine fires Western-supplied long-range missiles into his country.

I don’t believe President Biden’s handlers are stupid enough to allow Ukraine to fire US-made missiles into the Russian heartland. Their plan is to allow the Ukraine war to drag on for as long as it takes until Russia loses heart and admits defeat.

That plan won’t work. The Russian economy is growing despite Western sanctions, and the Russian army is much bigger now than it was when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Meanwhile, the war has been a disaster for Ukraine. Its cities and infrastructure are being pounded into rubble.  More than 6 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded.

There are only two likely outcomes of the war in Ukraine. First, the West can assure Russia that Ukraine will not join NATO and accede to at least some of Russia’s demands for annexation of Ukrainian territory. At the very least, the West must admit that Crimea is part of Russia.

Alternatively, this war can drag on until one side or the other miscalculates, and the war escalates into a nuclear conflict. If that happens, the baby boomer generation will send its grandchildren to Eastern Europe to fight World War III.

Let us suppose the US is plunged into a nuclear war due to missteps by our nation's bungling diplomats. In that case, the Democratic Party can take comfort in the knowledge that its dream of destroying the American economy, American values, and American culture was finally realized.

It was necessary to destroy Ukraine to save it.

90 second Movie Review: Killer Heat is a Good Contemporary Film Noir

I love film noir movies, especially the black-and-white films made in the 1930s and 1940s that featured cynical private detectives who smoked too much, drank too much, and held cynical views about life in general and women in particular. Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum were masters of film noir, and they wore their slouch fedora hats in a way that made them look both sinister and dissipated.

"Killer Heat" is a worthy addition to the film noir genre. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Nick Bali, an ex New York cop whose life was turned upside down by the discovery of his wife’s infidelity. Bali is a Greek American who speaks the Greek language, so he moves to Athens and sets up shop as a private detective who drinks bourbon straight from the bottle.

Bali is hired by Penelope Vardakis (played by the beautiful Shailene Woodley), the sister-in-law of a wealthy man who died under suspicious circumstances. Bali uses effective but slightly dishonest tactics to solve what turns out to be a murder.

I won’t reveal more of the plot other than to say that the story moves quickly and is enhanced by a backstory that explains why Bali is so bitter about his past.

"Killer Heat" may not be great drama, but film noir fans will enjoy it. For one thing, viewers can understand the plot, which is more than can be said for that famous film noire classic, "The Big Sleep." The movie is set in Crete, and the Mediterranean landscape is breathtakingly beautiful. You can find this film on Amazon.

Killer Heat, a film in the classic film noir tradition

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