Letter to My Granddaughter, No. 20

By | August 25, 2023

[August 25, 2023]  The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer.  My uncle DJ (Douglas James, and my namesake) Satterfield, much older than my dad served as a cook in the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II.  Later in life, he was a long-serving member of the Pine Bluff, Arkansas VFW, where he spent many… Read More »

Russia and Ukraine War: We Have No Strategy

By | August 24, 2023

[August 24, 2023]  In March of 2014, just as Russia invaded Crimea in southeast Ukraine, I wrote that the common prediction was Russia would not invade.  Therefore, I believed the U.S. would fail to develop a Western-America-centric strategy to stop Russia.  I’m not here to say I was right, but to emphasize that it was unacceptable then and… Read More »

GOP Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy

By | August 21, 2023

[August 21, 2023] It’s not too early to write about the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections because we are slowly discovering what makes the candidates tick.  On the Republican Party side, there are many who declared; on the Democrat Party side, we are hearing little.  Vivek Ramaswamy is one of the major contenders.  What I like about him is… Read More »

Incompetence and the Maui Fire

By | August 20, 2023

[August 20, 2023] Investigations into what caused the apocalyptic blazes on parts of Maui will continue for years and, to no one’s surprise, the outcome will be unsatisfactory.  I’ve often written that when leaders are incompetent, bad things happen.  Unfortunately, early information from the Maui fire suggests an unusually high degree of government incompetence that made things much… Read More »

Letters to My Granddaughter No. 19

By | August 19, 2023

[August 19, 2023] I wouldn’t say I liked school.  I never liked school.  It’s not that I hated school or was disgusted by it.  Going to class every day just wasn’t what I wanted to do.  Of course, today, I disapprove of that attitude, it’s not very helpful, and it worked greatly to my disadvantage.  Alas, I did… Read More »

College is a Rip-off, Mostly

By | August 18, 2023

[August 18, 2023] Earlier this year, I wrote a popular article titled, Don’t Go to College.  I still stick by that advice.  And I’m not the only one with that opinion.  A New York Post opinion by John Stossel calls college a rip-off and also an “overpriced scam” (link here).  Except for the few who want to pursue… Read More »

Letters to my Granddaughter: No. 18

By | August 16, 2023

[August 16, 2023] When my brother was five, and I was seven, my father took us on a three-day camping trip down the Sabine River on the Texas-Louisiana border.  This would be a “man’s trip,” talking man things, my dad getting to know us better, fishing, cooking over a campfire, sleeping under the open sky, and floating downstream… Read More »