All the legal terms being used to describe the Ft. Hood killer are amazing. There were a room full of witnesses watching this guy kill 13 people and wound 30 others and the media and the lawyers have the nerve to call him a suspect. In the days of the old west he would have been taken to the nearest tree and hung for his crime of murder. Now days the authorities are reluctant to call this murder and excuses for his action will be made to protect the civil right of this homicidal monster.

They are now referring to the allegations against the defendant rather than saying this cold-blooded killer. The strongest term that has been used is perpetrator of the shootings. The news also refers to him as the accused.

It will probably take years before this horrific act and the killer are brought to trial. We simply can’t run the risk of violating this guys civil rights. The court will then hear justification for his actions, like he shouldn’t have been retained in the army because he didn’t want to kill the other scum in his homeland. It’s okay that he voluntarily joined the military and thousands of taxpayer dollars were used for his education. We are now about to waste thousands of more taxpayer dollars to try this grease ball.

Where is a Jack Ruby when we need him? In retrospect, Jack Ruby was probably right is killing Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald might still be in prison if Ruby had not acted for us.

Another defense for this piece of trash is that he was acting for his God to rid the world of infidels and that his action was no more than the killing that is done in battle. Allah and the Holy Koran authorized him to go into battle to protect is brethren at home. He will probably have a jury made up of Muslims and Unitarians who will understand his point of view and acquit him. Then the US Government will pay him disability and a pension for the rest of his life because he was paralyzed in the line of duty.
I only hope that this swarthy murderer will meet the same fate that I wish for the deer who occupy my backyard and spoil the view from the porch. This deranged fanatic has certainly spoiled our view of Muslims and their part of the world.

My spouse is already in the kitchen getting ready for Thanksgiving. I did my part this morning. My job is to make the cornbread for the dressing. Cornbread making is my specialty. I was taught by the master when I was a child; my mother. Cornbread is the basic ingredient for the dressing that accompanies the turkey. Some folks prefer the dressing made primarily with flour. Yuk!!

Cornbread is like nectar from the Gods. God provided manna for the wandering Israelites when they left Egypt. Manna is supposed to come in the night with the dew. I can mix the cornbread up anytime and it goes with everything. God hadn’t discovered cornbread at the time of the exodus or he would have provided the Jews with this delicacy and they would probably have been a much less contentious bunch through the years. God had to wait until the birth of my mother before one of the great food discoveries, namely cornbread. Mankind missed out on a lot without cornbread. I could do without cell phones and even computers but not cornbread.

My favorite meals have been at home, not at some fancy expensive restaurant. There is nothing better than a meal of blackeyed peas, fresh homegrown tomatoes or a stewed mixture of okra, tomatoes and onions, all of course complimented with cornbread and iced tea. I like an evening meal or late night snack of nothing but cornbread crumbled into a big glass of cold milk.

My cornbread has an egg and buttermilk as a couple of the essential ingredients, so it’s probably bad for you. Who cares? I had rather cross over the River Jordon than be denied my cornbread. Like my little granddaughter said, “if it taste good it must be bad for you.” In the case of cornbread, I prefer the taste to good health.

As I sit on the porch and enjoy the aroma of the goodies being prepared in the kitchen, I noticed the deer getting closer to the house. If I left the door open, I’m sure they would be in the kitchen for a piece of that cornbread as it comes out of the oven.

The government will spend millions probing into the life of Nidal Hasan the Fort Hood shooter who took the life of 13 people and injured 30 others. I could save them a lot of money because I know his situation well. Having served in the military at Walter Reed and also having worked with various residencies and physicians of all types for over 50 years I can speak with some degree of authority.

I feel confident in the profile of this individual that I could construct. To begin with he is a Muslim who is indoctrinated with the beliefs of this religion. He believes that the rest of us are infidels and that it is a holy thing to take out as many Christians and Jews as possible even at the expense of his own life. He, of course, is totally opposed to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and certainly was not going to tolerate being deployed to fight against his brethren. The fact that he is an American citizen and has been a quiet neighbor means nothing.

He was a poor physician who didn’t fit into the mold of the average student in training. This has not always been the case, but currently his chosen field of psychiatry is a noncompetitive residency and attracts the poorest and most dysfunctional students. There are of course exceptions to this statement but Hasan was no exception, he was the norm. Some of the brightest students I have known have chosen psychiatry for a career but they are the exception. It is no surprise that he received poor residency evaluations and I’m sure he was a misfit throughout his entire training.

The fact that he was a major in the army means nothing. Doctors are promoted automatically because of time in rank and merit is not a consideration in the promotions process. He could have been a psychotic Adolph Hitler and still have made colonel.

The sad thing is that we allow dysfunctional people to complete residency training or medical school and even serve in the military. We are reluctant to dismiss these misfits because it’s too much trouble and there will be an army of lawyers down on us for violating the individual’s civil rights. As a result they continue to marginally get through and do much harm to patients and have the potential to perform a heinous act such as the massacre at Fort Hood.

That’s my analysis from the porch and I suspect it is completely correct. My recommendation is to turn off the ventilator and save the taxpayers some money.

Yesterday’s news reported about the financial problems of the movie superstar Nicholas Cage. Cage makes 20 million a movie with a whole string of movies like “National Treasure” to his credit. He has been a multimillionaire and has several mega-mansions scattered around the world. Cage is now in big financial trouble because his financial advisor has made off with all the money and left Cage in debt and owing 6 million to the IRS. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for a guy like that. Even though he owes all that money to the government he will probably get off without a hitch whereas I would be in jail for owing a hundred bucks.

Maybe I’m just jealous but all these multimillionaires are about to drive me to becoming a socialist. Of course the Wall Street gangsters and the CEOs of banks and big businesses are the worst. Ballplayers are also in the million-dollar club. They are a bunch of millionaires out there getting tackled, hitting a baseball or throwing a ball into a hoop. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain because there are a lot of folks in my profession who don’t see patients making megabucks.

It’s easy to understand why the masses who are doing the work finally revolt. I’m not one to march and carry signs but my revolt is to simply not see anymore Nicholas Cage movies and to stop watching some of the ridiculous ball games that don’t mean anything anyway.

Even the authors of some the books I read are in the multi-millionaire club as well as some of the musicians I enjoy. Folks like Mozart and other classic musicians were people of modest means or even poor. Most of the authors of the classic books were not wealthy and certainly not in the class of a pro ballplayer or a Nicholas Cage. No one has been in the league of the Wall Street gang.

To keep from getting angry with all of these overpaid thugs I guess I will have to restrict my reading on the porch to the scriptures and notes from my friends on facebook.

It has been said that no matter how bad things may be for you that there is someone in the world who has it worse. The way things have been going lately, I would sure hate to see that person. Sometimes I feel like I could add a chapter or two to Job.

I recently received the above picture from a friend and it brightened my day to know that some may have it even worse with animals in the deer family taking over their yard. I’m going to have to stop complaining about my deer after seeing what those poor people in Montana have to put up with. The elk are larger but my deer make up for the difference by sheer number. There are now about 30 of the scrawny pest eating my foliage.

I’m still studying effective deer deterrents and so far I have found that there are none. My book on poisonous plants hasn’t even helped. One of the most lethal poisons in the world is ricin, which comes from the bean of the Castor Bean plant. The Castor Bean plants are pretty common and have a big leaf. Some people have planted these in their yard because they are supposed to keep flies away. The problem is that the deer love the leaves of the plant, which are tasty and nonpoisonous. They don’t eat the beans.

I had always thought that the human was the most intelligent of the species. After living on the planet for several decades and being part of that group I’m convinced that is untrue. The deer are the most intelligent of all the animals even the fox and dogs. They just roam around eating anything they want and are protected by the law. They are very promiscuous and apparently have a lot of fun just breeding with each other with no major objections from others in the herd. The does don’t seem to be the least bit jealous and don’t really care who they breed with. There are some in the human species who exhibit similar behavior but they frequently end up in jail or the morgue.

I guess the best thing is for me to just give up on the deer problem. If we build another home we will probably have a rock yard in the desert. With my luck there will be something else to contend with such as scorpions, Gila Monsters and such. I would probably still have a porch just to admire the absence of deer.

Everywhere I go the traffic is horrible. Everyone is in a hurry and there are thousands of cars on the road. I have finally figured out where everyone is going. They obviously aren’t going to work because everyone is unemployed.

This week we have been in Dallas accompanying my daughter to some doctor’s appointments. I know now that everyone is rushing to a medical appointment of some type. The parking lots and garages of every hospital and clinic are packed. At our local hospital there is always a sea of cars in the parking lot. It’s that way at every medical facility and it’s going to get worse. When national health insurance is available to everyone then the entire population will be at the doctors office every day. The problem is that there will not be enough doctors. It’s hard to get a doctor to accept Medicare patients now and with the government plan it will be worse. Very few doctors will accept government plan patients.

The people who are packing the doctors office now will greatly increase and every doctor will be in overload. The remainder of the people who are driving around on the road are either going to the shopping malls or to a sporting event. This bunch of folks will be joining those already waiting to see the doctor. Going to the doctor is more fun than the Super Bowl or shopping.

Healthcare is the one field that is pretty much depression and recession proof. These folks are always busy. They may be paid less in the future but they always have a job. It’s great for everyone involved, not just the doctors. Many of the non-physician CEOs and other support functions for healthcare make a lot more that the poor doc or others actually seeing the patient. Many CEOs make well over a million a year and are almost in the league with bankers and other Wall Street gangsters. The more you are involved in direct patient care, the less money you make in the healthcare business.

It’s a long way from my old country doc who made house calls. He couldn’t do much but he made you fell a lot better and at least he took the time to communicate with his patients.

Government healthcare is definitely coming so I suggest increasing the number of parking places at the medical facilities and widening the roads. There is going to be even more traffic. From the porch I can hear the steady hum of traffic on I35 which is more than a mile away. Soon that will be a roar. My hope is that it might frighten the deer away.

Today, my spouse and I attended an interesting talk by Stephen Harrigan, author of the book “Gates of the Alamo.” He has written several other book but the Alamo book is his most famous work. He has certainly researched the subject of the fall of the Alamo. Harrigan claims that the story about Travis drawing the line in the sand is a myth. This is the famous story about drawing the line in the sand with his sword and inviting all that were willing to stay and fight to the death to cross over. The story is that all but one stepped over the line. The lone dissenter was a fellow named Moses Rose who claimed he had a family and was too young to die.

There is no good historical evidence that this drawing the line ever really occurred. A fellow named William Zuber wrote a book about his 80 years in Texas in which he claimed that Rose came to his home in Shiro, Texas and told the story to him. Harrigan doesn’t believe the account by Zuber because Zuber told the story 40 years after it occurred and his memory was getting rather dim. Harrigan claims the whole story is a myth.

In history, it’s hard to tell what is myth and what is fact. I grew up thinking the Yankees were evil invaders of the South. Now the story makes the South the total bad guys. Some now believe that the holocaust never occurred. This will become dimmer with time and the Muslims may eventually convince the world that there was no holocaust. The Bible has really been picked apart about fact vs. fiction. Did Moses and God part the Red Sea and did Jesus perform all those miracles or was this all myth.

I write the blog mostly for fun, but it’s also a little historical account of the terrible things happening in the world. I’m keeping these on files but most likely no one will ever read them. I often wonder about my great grandfather who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto. I wonder what he really thought about things and I even wonder about what he ate and the ordinary things in his daily life. If future generations care I will have an account of the view from my porch and about the beginning of the deer before they completely took over the world.