Posted on

Aides “Newtloose” so where does this leave Rick and Dog on Man?

Well, it looks like advisers of Newt Gingrich took a vote of no-confidence as most of the aides walked on the former House speaker and current candidate for GOP presidential nomination. Since two of the aides have what The Texas Tribune calls “extensive links” to our good-haired Gov. Rick Perry, the star-powered non-profit Web site puts A + B together to get a capital C, which rhymes with P and that stands for Perry. (With apologies to Meredith Wilson, even though he’s been gone for quite awhile now.)

Just because Newt had a massive ship abandoning and some of those jumping are former Perry guys that adds to the “rampant speculation that Gov. Rick Perry will scoop them up to launch his own White House bid,” according to a Tribune story by veteran Austin reporter Jay Root.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Jay Root, former Associated Press and Fort Worth Star-Telegram capitol reporter, is one of the best state government reporters and definitely one of the best writers covering the subject. I just think it’s a little weak to make such speculations.

Maybe Good Hair, after this and perhaps more Special Sessions of the Texas Legislature this year, will decide to throw in his hat. It just musses up that purty coiffure anyway. But I don’t think such a leap as is being made due to the Newt-fection, which Root tags as “speculation” in any event, is warranted at 4:01 p.m. CDT, June 9, 2011. Or 4:02 p.m. CDT, …

It does not take much of a hop, skip or jump to surmise that the mass defection might have had more to do with Newt being a weak, turned weakened and particularly unattractive candidate. That also is not to say Rick Perry would be a stronger or particularly appealing Republican presidential aspirant. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of two more less appealing candidates for president or even dog catcher to represent any party.

So at least for the moment, I would say the tote board shows: Gingrich defection 1, Perry probably < 1. But, I live in Beaumont and not Austin, so what do I know?

Oh, and speaking of another possible GOP hopeful — this one actually makes me feel sorry for the Republican Party — former Sen. Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum declared today that climate change is “junk science.” That’s not so surprising especially since Rush Limbaugh — on whose show this “great man of science Santorum” made such a proclamation, has a jihad against the scientific notion of climate change. However, GOP candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told a town hall meeting in New Hampshire last week that he thinks the Earth is warming and as a result of human activity. I suppose the GOP has got that “big tent” thing working.

And, I take it back, I can think of an equally unappealing candidate for president as Rick Santorum. Move over Newt and Good Hair.

 

 

Posted on

The nexis of nothing and not much of nothing (That’s what she said)

wow. As in, underwhelmed-type “wow.”

Who would have thought our little corner of the state of Texas would be, sort of, the center of the media universe. At least, it was for a little while yesterday. That proved true as well in the completely ridiculous story of a New York congressman sex-texting his Newt, a sordid tale named appropriately by some in the media for such a political scandal — “Weinergate.”

“Oh I wish I weren’t a Congressman Anthony Weiner, that is what I truly wouldn’t be-e-e,
cause if I were a Congressman Anthony Weiner everyone would say WTF? to me. Another verse, with more gusto …”

Or something like that.

I have lost faith, interest, whatever you lose with a newspaper, with my hometown newspaper, “The Beaumont Enterprise.” The Hearst Newspaper product has a storied history, or a history of stories, at least. It still has a couple of good writers. But I think the Internet has turned the paper into something much less than it was and considerably less than what it could be, sorry but I couldn’t end with a preposition.

Call it psychic misfire or where one story ends and the other begins, I did buy today’s Enterprise in a store. Buying one these days is indeed a rarity even though it is a time this former reporter should be supporting newspapers. The Internet has ruined the Enterprise in more ways than one. I will not go deeply but anyone with a knowledge of newspaper newsrooms these days could easily figure out what is wrong with the my local paper.

Still, “Mass grave hysteria,” today’s below-the-fold story kind of sums up what is wrong with news today. That is even though the headline refers to the story about a psychic who managed to get scores of cops and media types, complete with their sat trucks and helicopters, out into the Big Thicket yesterday.

A lot of weird stuff happens in “The Thicket,” which refers both to a region which is both a botanical crossroads of the contiguous United States and a federal preserve under the control of the National Park Service. There, is this little lane through the woods known as “Bragg Road” which has drawn teens and curiosity seekers for decades to see the mysterious lights that seem to look different to each who catches a glimpse. Some say it is swamp gas. Others say it the spirit of a railroad man who worked on nearby rails. Depending on who tells the story, the railroader lost his hand while hitching together some rail cars and the ghost now walks around carrying his railroad lantern looking for that missing glove-holder.

So the story that sort of did, sort of didn’t, happen yesterday is not a real classic Big Thicket story though one day, with much telling and mis-telling, it may so become.

What happened is Liberty County authorities, where this psychic non-drama took place, got a call from a woman claiming to be a psychic. She reportedly was from the Texas Panhandle but was calling from a Austin-area telephone. That sounds kind of like the wonderful introduction the classic live version of the Waylon Jennings tune, “Bob Wills Is Still the King:”

“Here is a song I wrote on a plane between Dallas and Austin. Going to El Paso.”

That sounded kind of freaky back in the 70s, but not today to anyone who flies American Airlines in Texas.

The psychic conjured up a horrible scenario of chopped up kiddies with plenty of blood and gore told with just enough of the right details to make local authorities take notice.

As is the case when anything more than a 10-96 goes down in these parts, all the area authorities like to join in, those such as the Texas Rangers, the FBI, Gator 911, the Hardin-Jefferson Screaming Hawks High School Band, the Coast Guard, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the formidable Beaumont ISD Police Department.

And great googly moogly, when you’ve got that many cops in one place, you know who is going to show up don’t you? That’s right. The Dunkin’ Donut Mobile Rescue Corps.  No, the news media. This event/non event taking place right in the epicenter of a couple of small news markets such as Huntsville, Lufkin and Beaumont, and a large one, namely Houston, plus the national guys such as CNN out of Dallas, brings in mucho media.

Search did the police. They found some rotting meat in a malfunctioning freezer. On a really, really hot Texas day. Jeez, those police deserve a bonus for that. They also found some blood which the owner, reportedly a long-haul trucker who was on the road and was quite surprised to hear a national “happenin'” was going down at his place, said came from a botched suicide attempt. The botchee, was allegedly the landlord’s daughter’s ex boyfriend who was stationed at Fort Hood. Although I do not encourage suicide, I can see why the soldier tried, since he was stationed at Fort Hood.

But the cops found no chopped up bodies of kids or anything else.

Meanwhile, “Naughty politician sexted LU student,” the Enterprise head read, “LU” referring to local Lamar University. Yes, a local 26-year-old was getting nastygrams from Anthony Weiner. The young lady went on Sean Hannity’s show and reportedly — I don’t watch Hannity — gave a very grown-up account of the … whatever it is. ABC reportedly paid a very grown-up amount between $10,000 and $15,000 for an interview with our local 15 minutes of fame celeb Meagan Broussard. I sound snarky, but I could do a lot with $15,000, so I will be less than judgmental.

I close this media-rich episode with a message that just came up at the bottom of my blog saying: “You do not have permission to do that.”

Everywhere you have a critic.

 

Posted on

When you’re hot, you’re hot

It’s getting to look a lot like summer. I don’t know how hot it was today. I am about to the point where I just as soon not know the temperature outside. It seems the more you know how hot it is the more you sweat.

Weather seems to be just one more thing to aggravate you as you grow older.  It’s as if I didn’t have enough things to piss me off. I’m becoming (am) a grumpy old man at 55. Just think of the potential!

I know, of course, I (we) only have myself (ourselves) to blame. When you stay inside an air conditioned world all the time, you are going to miss it when you step outside awhile. I doubt that it is no hotter than it was when I moved to this town the first (of three) times. This was 32 years ago come July. It was even hotter, for that matter, being in July. Ah the life after a four-year stint in the Navy and drawing that big, old unemployment check. I can’t remember what it was but I know it couldn’t have been a whole lot since I left the Navy as an E-5 making about $550 a month.

Now I could have just said: “No sir, I’m not going to take that government money. I’m going to get me a job.” I did that about a month and a half later as a firefighter. But it was nice to have it light for a little while. I didn’t bust my ass every day in the Navy although I did live a regimented life. Plus, I had lived, eaten, slept, showered, shaved and shined my shoes almost every day on a “tin can,” a.k.a. destroyer, for that past year. So I kind of enjoyed “the life.”

My typical day would start about 9 or 10 in the morning. It’s funny, I had no trouble sleeping late after having endured “Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up” over the 1MC loudspeaker each morning, even when I was off duty. I got so I could sleep through reveille or turn to (go to work) when I wasn’t working. Heck, I could sleep through a typhoon, a somewhat worrisome quality of which I still haven’t lost the touch, seeing as how I slept through the arrival of the Category 1 hurricane Humberto.

Each day I would get out of my little garage apartment. I would follow the state unemployment rules and go job hunting. Although it was plenty job hunting, to me, to apply at just one of the local refineries each day. I didn’t see any use in wearing myself out finding a job. What if someone called me and I would be plum tuckered out from job hunting?

Later in the day I would go see friends or my girlfriend, when that still happening, then it was off to The Keg, Fat Dawg’s, Lady Long Legs or one of the local places to quench a thirst or two.

Seeing the NBA Finals make me think of that time. I can’t remember who was playing, but I know that Queen’s “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” had come out earlier that year or the year before. It was one of the songs in the movie “FM,” which I saw that spring at a drive-in theater when I was was still on the ship in San Diego. But I seem to remember some kind of video montage at the end of the finals, Detroit or whoever it was who won, and it was set to “We Are the Champions.” We all thought that was pretty cool. Little did we know we’d still be hearing the same songs at ball games 30 years later.

Well, as usual I took off from a rant about the weather to my life as an unemployed ward of the state after serving my country. But I have to pose the rhetorical question: Which would be better, sitting around on a hot day thinking about how hot it was way back when or sitting around on a hot day thinking about all the good times and easy life way back when, which happened no matter the weather?

To each, his or her, own.  But I think the answer is pretty easy.

 

Posted on

Bless our dogged cops

What a handsome fellow this Beacon, decked out with a flag kerchief and a U.S. Marshal’s badge. You can print out a trading card with Beacon provided you don’t have a photo editing program guaranteed to drive you into running fits — what my Dad used to call something dogs did when they went crazy. I never saw a dog into running fits, by the way.

Beacon failed "guide dog" school because of a fondness for chasing squirrels. But I mean, who can blame the fella? His loss is the US Marshal's Service gain as an explosive sniffer.

I never saw a dog with a badge, well, not a four-legged kind until my first news assignment with then el presidente Jorge W. Bush. The dog was, if I remember correctly, an ATF dog-agent-dog and had a nice badge hanging from his neck in a leather case. I didn’t even have a badge to wear that time. I didn’t need no stinkin’ badges! Later when on a couple of occasions I was a local pool reporter I had a stinkin’ badge made out of cardboard. I still have a couple of them. Well, one is cardboard and the other is cardboard with a picture of Jorge driving his “pick-em-up truck” on one side and the White House, if I remember correctly, on the other. The badge is laminated. Ain’t I something?

Dogs are about the best thing with which one could associate except a good girlfriend (lady friend, female friend, I should maybe say that I now am age 55.) The latter is especially true as my dear, late friend Waldo Miller used to say  as long at the lady “drives your pickup for you and feeds your dog.” I always had to add as long she would also open your gate for you. I learned this living out in the country on Kingtown Road and had to either open the lock at the end of the heavy chain on my gate or have someone else to do it.  But I am getting way off course.

I love dogs. I have had trouble with a few, mostly little farts like the one who used to live next door to Waldo’s place when we were in high school. This little mutt would come out and sink its teeth into my ankle. It’s owner was a lawyer who was off and on our hometown’s district attorney. I’d complain about the little dog but mainly just inquire if it had its rabies shots. It had supposedly.

There is no doubt why TV, especially local TV news audiences love stories about police dogs which are turned into as much human as is possible without giving them a credit card.  We are a society which has long looked at animals, especially domestic ones, through an anthropomorphic lens. (Thanks so, so, much to the Beaumont Public Library Reference Librarian, who quickly came up with this word I was trying to remember but couldn’t. You rock!)

One peculiarity of modern news media is making police dogs into “K-9 officers.” I mean, it’s cute and all. And it’s police lingo which especially young reporters get hooked into early and will not shed unless they have a well-meaning but mean ol’  editor with a dislike for lingo. I covered the police beat quite a lot in my years as a reporter. I have to admit that it took quite awhile to get rid of an indirect quote from an officer who says a victim was “transported” by “Lifeflight” or who was “Lifeflighted” as opposed to just writing that the injured or wounded person was flown by medical helicopter  to  such and such a hospital.

Thus, “Officers and K-9 units, searched for hours.” That is okay if the K-9 units included a human and a canine.  But to consider  a dog as a “K-9” unit sounds odd if you think about calling old “Beacon” above, a unit.

“That unit sure can sniff out bombs.”

“Have you ever seen a unit strike such a handsome dog pose?

“Will you please get someone over here pronto to clean up the crap just taken by that unit?”

I have known a few police officers who trained and patrolled with dogs and would have just as soon spent their entire career riding the roads with their four-legged, friends. Dogs don’t tell you their dating problems, not usually at least. Dogs don’t  mind if you skipped a shower after an all-night bender unless you are teetering over the edge on your job. I used to work across the street in a small town where one of the police officers had a well-trained black Lab that was just remarkable going after lime-green tennis balls scrubbed with crack. I never actually saw the dog, whose name I have now forgotten, work catching those who transported weed or cocaine up U.S. 59  north of Houston. But Don, the cop who worked across the street from my office, would let me know whenever the black Lab would make a good score.

Personally, I think the so-called “war on drugs” is a waste of time. That is, at least a good portion of it. I think marijuana should be legalized. Other drugs should be carefully examined for their legality or illegality.  This “war” has caused so many lives to be ruined, ended, it has resulted in so much prison space needed for bad people, not sick or addicted people, to go missing.

That’s just me, though. I have a tremendous respect for the vast majority of the police officers in state, federal and local governments who risk their lives whether their threats come from drugs, greed, stupidity, insanity, politics, terror, or whatever. I include the “K-9 units” even if they are just dogs and live a dogs life.

I hope the dogs go home just as safely as the guys and ladies who wear the badges return home each day. That’s about all I have to say today. Hope you all, both two, four or however many legged people read this, have a great weekend as well. Wuff!

Posted on

Osama dies, it rains

It was difficult to determine this afternoon whether people plodding down the streets of Beaumont — umbrellas partially covering them from rain — had a special step in their walk because of the much-needed rain, or because Osama bin Laden was killed.

Why try to add anything about the death of “America’s Public Enemy No. 1 Since 9/11?” There are plenty of questions remaining and one of the biggest is how much will the military allow to be told about what was, in essence “a daring early morning raid into Pakistan by Navy Seals?” This piece from The Christian Science Monitor answers some basic questions about the raid by Seal Team 6. There are so many more questions though. What did bin Laden look? Like crap on a shingle? Was he nearly crippled and still sporting that long-ass beard? Was he the one that reports said took a woman as a human shield? I wouldn’t put it past him.

Other questions linger as well. Could the capture have been made without killing bin Laden? That will be probably a big question tossed around by reporters and policy wonks. Was this in fact a mission to take bin Laden “dead or alive” as our former President G.W. Bush declared? If it was a military assassination, was it covered by executive order that takes in black and white a precedence over previously-enacted laws that forbids such actions?

I am not saying the actions were wrong, quite the contrary. If some SOB had it coming, it was OBL or UBL or whatever spelling you want to use for the now departed murderer. That’s what the terrorist acts were. Maybe those were acts of war. Somewhere deep down in me though, feels as if  such distinctions made for these goofballs as some kind of super-combatants build these people up much more than they deserve. I laud the raid and its execution, no pun intended. I just believe it unfortunate that is to what our nation had to resort.

And I said I couldn’t add anything to the OBL death. I lie.

I was working in my office up there on the 3rd floor and apparently I had been looking out on and off at the rain, but it all hit me at once like a ton of feathers. Well, that’s kind of exaggerating don’t you think? Or don’t you? Nonetheless, we have needed a good “soaker.”

Our area of Southeast Texas is under what the National Weather Service terms a “Severe to Exceptional Drought.” There is a rainfall deficit that generally runs about 11 inches or so since Jan. 1. It’s Moe or Larry in other places around the area. We had a nice little rain where I live.

Hopefully, we will work this drought out pretty soon and won’t have to make it up in some tropical storm or hurricane. The latter is what we will have to watch for not too long from now. Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, those who predict hurricanes. We either will have one or more, or we won’t. If you live where I live, you must go with the assumption that a hurricane is coming to get you and your place this summer or early fall. You should plan for what you should do. Do it now, not later. There is no need to do  it all at once but try and get your supplies bought up and your evacuation plan (or not) worked out before the last minute.  I should practice what I preach, I know. But if I stay behind, and hopefully stay safe, it will be to freelance some rewarding pieces. It isn’t all about money. As in the past, I wanted a wider audience to know about what our folks were experiencing. This is especially true after the wind and rains and Anderson Cooper left.

I am still hoping for some good rains before the heart of hurricane season rolls around. But the end of droughts are guided by the same principle of the karmic episode in which Osama bin Laden found himself yesterday: “What goes around, comes around.”