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It’s crying time again, but not for the Speaker of the House

“Oh it’s crying time again you’re going to leave me/I can see that faraway look in your eyes … ” — ‘Crying Time’ — Buck Owens

John Boehner announced today that he was leaving his position as both a member and as Speaker of the House come the end of October. The Ohio Republican known for his tearful disposition did not have a faraway look in his eyes Thursday as Pope Francis delivered the first address by a pontiff in history. No, Boehner, a Catholic, looked as if it was all he could do to hold back tears.

One cannot blame the 65-year-old House leader. For someone whose job is more difficult than herding cats, day in and day out, the job of shepherding a GOP-led Congress could make many a grown men cry.

... "and 10 bucks for a f***ed up duck." White House photo by Pete Souza
… “and 10 bucks for a f***ed up duck.” White House photo by Pete Souza

A pot-calling-the-kettle-black quote from no less than New York Republican Rep. Peter King announced: “The crazies have taken over the party.” And all this time I thought King, who media critic Jack Shafer once described as “an exploding carbuncle masquerading as a member of Congress,” was a monarch of the crazies. Maybe King was not royal enough to be called King King of the Crazies, but at the very least he could be the Earl of Squirrels.

Perhaps the most personally encouraging news from the Boehner’s resignation is that the chance of a government shutdown has been lowered, at least according to some political experts. Whether that report from Politico is merely based on spin from some pols is hard to know. As was the case in the previous shutdown and all of those times such a lockout threat existed, this has not kept the government and its employee unions from telling workers to get ready. That is the only responsible move to make but that makes such warnings no less scary.

Boehner was seen by many as a moderate Republican although his more radical colleagues did not have the same opinion. His “go along to get along” attitude could often cast him as one with his crazy political family. My opinion of the speaker — as kindly as I can say — is he has been a rather talented political flake. There were times when I was tempted to admire him and a minute later declare what an ass****.

I have no reason to believe any of those mentioned who are

once Boehner is gone will be better for the country than what is around at the moment. I have to predict the worse because that is what we have received from Republicans for so many years, so many decades, now.

So read ’em and weep. But don’t cry for John B. I’m sure he’ll land a cushy lobbying job.

 

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I may be right for all I know, but you may be wrong.

An article caught my attention this afternoon concerning  wrong diagnoses by medical professionals. Now I am no medical professional. I was an EMT for 10 years, so if you ask me how to splint a broken femur, I could probably tell you how it was done 30 years ago. And so, indeed, I am no professional medical person but I probably fit the bill as a professional patient.

The article of note from NBCNewscom.com is titled: “Getting it Wrong: ‘Everyone Suffers an Incorrect or Late Diagnosis.'”

The National Academy of Medicine, whatever that may be, says pathologists and radiologists need to be more involved in a patient’s diagnosis. The Academy, as the former Institute of Medicine calls itself, says it can’t quantify the number of erroneous diagnoses but they know it is high. Because the Academy says so, damn it to hell! I suppose it’s like Justice Potter Stewart said in the 1964 Supreme Court decision on obscenity: Jacobellis v. Ohio, “I don’t know what obscenity is but I know it when I see it.”

Actually, that is not what Stewart said, or wrote, exactly.

 “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that, Steward said”

In reality and back to medicine, the Academy did report that 5 percent of Americans receive the wrong diagnosis in outpatient care. And 10 percent of autopsies show patients who were misdiagnosed. On and on it seeps like a morphine drip.

The report goes on to say that the number of autopsies have dropped because insurance does not cover the, ahem, procedure. The study went onto say radiologists and pathologists should be more involved in clinical care. Okey dokey. So they really don’t fault the medical professionals, instead the report just, well … I’m not totally sure what the reports are implying. More autopsies? I don’t know about the rest of the world but in Texas, postmortem studies are supposedly performed on all patients who die an unwitnessed death. Likewise, I think, the same goes for those whose lives end violently. One only may guess where the supposition goes. No, not up there. I said supposition, not suppositories.

In reading this NBC article on the report, one may understand its point while others do not. For instance, the common mental picture one forms of pathologists are that they sit around looking for tiny cancers all day when they aren’t cracking open someone’s rib cage with a Skill saw. Likewise, one might imagine radiologists sitting around all day looking at X-rays or MRIs. No on both counts.

A good friend of mine is what is known as an interventional radiologist. He is a professor at a medical school and teaches his specialty to budding radiologists. But he likewise uses his skills to save lives. Says the Society for Interventional Radiology:

 “(Interventional radiologists) offer the most in-depth knowledge of the least invasive treatments available coupled with diagnostic and clinical experience across all specialties. They use X-rays, MRI and other imaging to advance a catheter in the body, usually in an artery, to treat at the source of the disease internally.”

Here is a little known fact, to me at least. These highly-trained radiologists were the inventors of the angioplasty and catheter-delivered stents which were originally developed for treating peripheral arterial diseases. Pretty neat stuff it is. Had my friend not have been in the field of interventional radiology, I probably would have learned it off the street from some first-year med student selling professional journals with racy X-ray pictures. That’s a joke son!

I see a whole broader issue as far as wrong diagnoses leading to super-wrong outcomes. I go to the VA for my health care and bless their hearts, they love their electronic patient records. Some medical pros must sleep with the records they love them so much. Some of them do not read past the first page of the computerized charts. That’s for another day though, maybe.

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“Iron Lady” Fiorina and Dr. Carson ticket? No way.

The stories I have been reading pronounce Carly Fiorina as the winner of this week’s CNN Republican debate. She certainly made a strong presence both in her, seeming, knowledge of foreign policy as well as her stopping the Donald Trump train in its tracks.

Despite Fiorina bitch-slapping Trump with silence over his off-the-cuff remark on her looks in a Rolling Stone article, the former Hewlitt-Packard executive at times resembled the reincarnation of the U.K.’s Maggie Thatcher.

The GOP “Iron Lady” talked tough on Russia and its leader Vladmir Putin by barking the U.S. Navy 6th Fleet should be built up along with missile defenses, and thousands of troops being sent to Germany. Whether such moves are reasonable or even needed is questionable.

I wondered, as I told my friend and correspondent in Tokyo, Paul, whether Fiorina might start a war with Argentina as the original Iron Lady Thatcher did.

My prognostication for the November 2016 match-up doesn’t include Lady Fiorina. We can’t have two women run for president. That’s preposterous! That is just as we couldn’t have another black president, such as Dr. Ben Carson, anytime soon. A ticket with both Fiorina and Carson? That also is unlikely.

Barring some arrest or indictment on either side, I still see Hillary versus Jeb. No two women will run. That just goes against the natural order of the parties and their people. A black man as the Republican nominee? As much as the right hates Obama, mostly because he is (partly) black, a large part of the electorate wouldn’t elect Dr. Carson if he could heal by laying on hands.

These predictions probably sound like I am the misogynist here or the racist here. No, I’m just the Democrat here. And I am looking at the way things are. That’s good for the Democrats — oh and if the GOP shuts down the government again this discussion will become moot. The Republicans might have that divide I’ve wished for over the years. As good as that might be for the Dems, I don’t see how the outcome will help equality in our nation.

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No “gub-mint” takeover. We ur still Texans.

Take a breather my fellow Texans.

I woke up this morning and found no military forces standing at port arms with their automatic weapons at the ready.

When I turned on the TV, the damned thing didn’t work and I remember my remote falling from the table before I went to bed. So I had to spend about 30 minutes trying to reprogram the cheap-ass RCA remote. But when I did get the TV to work I tuned into CNN. And on was nothing more than the same old “All-Donald all the time.”

What I am trying to say is, the military didn’t take over the U.S. and giant billboards of President For Life Barack Hussein Obama did not appear. At least, they didn’t show up any place that I know.

Jade Helm 15 is over. And all those nutcases who got their knickers tied up in a knot were left with nothing more than a whole lot of egg on their face. All those of you whose fret over a revocation of the Second Amendment have no reason for concern. That is until the next imagined threat comes about.

Now I have some good friends in the Lone Star State, the place I have called home for almost 56 of my nearly 60 years. Some are gun nuts. Others are just plain nuts. That’s one reason they’re my friends. The best I can recall, all my exes live in Texas, kind of the way George Strait sang it except I’ve only been to the airport in Memphis. I had scant time to hang my hat in Tennessee.

I was reading today about this guy who lives down the road from me in Nederland, Texas. He heads the Texas Nationalist Movement. I see the fellow who leads it, Daniel Miller, around town every now and then. I’ve never talked with him. But Miller and his group are pushing a petition drive that would put Texas secession on the Republican Primary ballot. Yessir. The Texas Republican Party is less than thrilled, reports the Texas Tribune. I couldn’t ever imagine why.

If such a ballot initiative could only come with a (very short) federal government shutdown, I doubt we would see a GOP president for, well, maybe ever. Of course, I’m not wanting a shutdown. I definitely do not want a shutdown, please understand. I’m just saying that the Republican Party has a lot of dynamics these days that make it like death sucking on a Lifesaver.

But that’s Texas. That is all Texas. We are tall, and not so tall, Texans. We wear a 10-gallon hat. Mostly though, I wear a ball cap.

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A little wanderlust but as Johnny Cash sang …

After work I spent a bit of free time filling out my passport application. Am I going somewhere? Probably. I don’t know where. Just in case I do travel, even to Mexico or Canada (there’s a good idea, the latter,) I need a card or a passport.

I am sure this will come as a shocker to those who think I’m a jet-setter. I’ve never had a passport before. I had a big yellow immunization card when I was in the Navy. Within a year I had visited Acuña, Juárez, and Tijuana in Mexico; Olangapo and Subic City in the Philippines; Suva, Fiji; the Marshall Islands; Auckland, Nelson and Whangeri, New Zealand; Newcastle, NSW; Devenport, Tasmania, and Perth, Western Australia, all in Australia; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Taipei and Keelung, Taiwan. That’s a pretty good dance card, all without a passport. All travel was, of course, courtesy of my poor Uncle Sugar (Sam.)

It was called to my attention by friends, some 10 or more years ago, that I needed a passport. The passport card wasn’t needed everywhere outside the US of A then. My friends said: “You never know when you might have to go somewhere.” I was working as a reporter then and not making much cash. I figured if I needed a passport I’d have time to get the funds to purchase one. The demand back then was not nearly as that of today.

Sure enough, a time came when I needed one. I could have gone as a reporter to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That’s right, to the terrorist jail to see how nice our forces where treating the captives. Like they would waterboard one or make the prisoners stand in a naked human pyramid as happened in Abu Ghraib. Note: I covered the court martial of the alleged ring-leader at that big clusterf**k in Iraq, former Army Spc. Charles Graner. What a class act. Back to the subject, I never went to Gitmo because I didn’t have a passport or the time to get one. I also never went to Iraq, although I volunteered to be an “imbed” or is that “inbred?”

Perhaps I may go to some foreign land this summer, whether it be Canada, the Caribbean, Central America or Mississippi. Just joking, my old Mississippi friends. Playboy listed Old Miss as the No. 9 “party school” in the country. Back in the 70s, a couple of years before I was discharged from the Navy, my alma mater was on that list. Yesiree Bob, Stephen F. Austin, party like it’s 1979.

I had planned to do a couple of mini-stories or pieces. Yeah, kind of like Hershey Kisses, or a couple of pint-sized hookers (Sorry.) The Playboy list was one such short-short. The other took place right “cheer” as Andy Griffith would say. A news story happened here in Beaumont, Texas, where I live and at my favorite (and only) GI Surplus store.

Don't take your grenade to town, son/Leave your grenade at home, Bill ... EFD File Foto
Don’t take your grenade to town, son/Leave your grenade at home, Bill ... EFD File Foto

It seems a guy was cleaning out his 75-year-old uncle’s apartment when he found a hand grenade. He didn’t know if it was live or a dummy grenade. The latter like you often see at GI Surplus stores. I bought one once but not at this store, or in this town. I don”t know whether I still have it. But it was definitely  a dummy. My Dad bought it for me, and he wouldn’t let me play with a live grenade. I don’t think he would, at least.

The fellow cleaning out his Uncle’s apartment wasn’t sure if the explosive was real or a dummy. So what did he do? What would you do? Call the police, or fire department or the Army? I lived about 45 miles from Fort Polk, La., growing up. When someone found leftover grenades from the 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers, and there were quite a few back in the 60s, folks would call Fort Polk. Or, they’d call the sheriff and he’d call Fort Polk. The bomb squad came over. Poof, everything was hunky dory.

But Fort Polk isn’t quite as close to Beaumont. So the guy with the grenade called the police and fire, right? No, of course not, he put the grenade in the glove compartment of his pickup truck and hauled it to the GI Surplus Store on College Street. The story is easily found. It has a big rocket out front and an anti-aircraft gun, all of which saw many better days.

 “He decided it was “surplus” so he would bring it to GI Surplus,” said a press release from Beaumont police spokeswoman Officer Carol Riley.

Officer Riley said the fire department and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents took the grenade to “headquarters” for disposal.

Wait, they took it to the fire headquarters downtown? And where is ATF located? Are they in the Bank of America building on Calder at 10th, the same place as the FBI? Hmm. I don’t want to know. Well I do want to know but it’s not worth it to keep on typing this thing. This monster is now at 800 freaking words. Make that 856. Goodbye!