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Diagnosis: Mass murder fatigue

Too many thoughts are racing back and forth. I am not “depressed” though I do suffer from depression. One Veterans Affairs nurse practitioner — not a psychologist — wrote into my record a diagnosis of “narcissistic personality disorder.” No, I don’t have any of that today. That is, as far as I can tell.

No I think many in our land suffer from what is wrong with me. Perhaps it hasn’t been officially declared by the “Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” That is the “bible” of psychiatry. If the disorder hasn’t been categorized and named here is a suggestion: “Mass Murder Fatigue.”

I am aware that might sound narcissistic. Perhaps it is even flippant-sounding. But I am more or less serious.

The theater shooting last night in Lafayette, La., about 125 miles east straight down Interstate 10 from where I sit, is troubling in many ways. Thankfully, the Lafayette — I was there on business last week — shooting is less complicated and not likely wrapped up into Jihadism as was the mass killing in Chattanooga, Tenn. It was only a week ago that four Marines and a Navy petty officer died from that mass shooting. This time the venue was a recruiting office and a Navy and Marines reserve center. Muhammad Abdulazeez was the shooter in that assault. Abdulazeez died after one of the slain Marines and the center’s commanding officer returned fire, according to today’s Navy Times.

It seems this shooting last night was apparently a typical instance of severe mental illness, whether psychotic or overly narcissistic or just a crackpot. Whatever you call it. Sadly, I don’t really seem to care.

Not even the glasses and wigs found in the Motel 8 room in which the mass shooter stayed interested me. Motels have such a bad rap by the way. I could write a book.

It isn’t that I don’t care though about those two young women, known as bright and lovely, who lost their lives while watching a movie. Nor am I callous toward those who were injured in the carnage. But I am not very intrigued by the Lafayette shooter, a man who supposedly graduated from law school but was a perpetual crank, according to lawmen.

I would sound like a very bad person to say I don’t care about these mass shootings. Those killings seem to click like dominoes one after another. So no, it isn’t I don’t care. Me, who was almost blown away with a shotgun as a toddler, not caring? No, I think I care too much.

I care that our society has become so murderous. I care that the only cure our politicians, fed by the NRA-Koch money machine, can come up with is meeting these mass killings with more guns.

“Oh my neighbor’s tree is hanging over our fence.”

“Buy a gun.”

“My toe hurts.’

“Get a gun”

“Ain’t this heat something?”

“Get a gun?”

No, it’s that I care too much that I am left adrift in a world where people with intense personal problems think they can cure their ills by shooting as many people as possible. Then, they either kill themselves or force police to shoot them. Some would say, why not skip the killing and shoot yourself first? That is ridiculous. It is ridiculous as all the killings week after week. We have mentally ill people who need more help than having some shrink handing out the anti-depressive du jour.

Fatigue, that’s what I got. I need to go out in the woods and listen to the wind through the pines to clear my head. I like shooting targets. I don’t think that would be very therapeutic.

This crap of murder and mayhem is wearing me down. I have fatigue. Our society needs to get a grip. And that grip is not at the butt of a gun.

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A new VA hospital in Orange, Texas? Man, give me some of that smoke!

Well, I’m back. Not that I went anywhere. I see I haven’t posted since last week. When I was last here Tropical Storm Bill was causing havoc with its torrents of rain. But alas, I have returned to the keyboard and summer has returned to Southeast Texas with its muggy days and afternoon bouts of here and there thunderstorms.

Having not written in a few days I do realize that many items of importance have gone unmentioned by the proprietor. To that, I must say, missed it. Missed that. Missed that as well!

Something just caught my attention on the local news though.

The story by KFDM Channel 6 right here in Beaumont, Texas, got me to wondering what some of the folks over in Orange County (Texas) have been  smoking?

I mean, the 70s were my heyday and that was supposed to be a time when folks were smoking a lot of different things. I was there, but I don’t remember much of it … being so long ago. With all these places allowing marijuana, like Colorado, I don’t know much what to say. I figured I would never see marijuana legal. Of course, it is only half-assed legal. It’s illegal, according to federal law. But a bunch of different local laws were passed making pot legal for everything to medicinal reasons to recreational. I think all places should just cover their bases and make it all legal. The federal government too!

But in this story on Channel 6 story by Lauren Huet, one wonders if she must have run into a bunch of folks over in Orange, between Beaumont and Louisiana, who are smoking something mighty potent.

The story this evening tells how locals over in Orange including the young county judge seem to think they can get the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build an inpatient hospital there. That very idealistic. Very very idealistic.

I tell you why. Not so many years ago the VA went through the “CARES” years. And those years weren’t anything like the Care Bears. The GOP presidential years in the early “Oughts” (2000) could have been called the “Don’t CARES Bears.” Too bad I didn’t think of that back then.

CARES was an acronym for a VA-equivalent of the military Base Closing and Realignment Commission. CARES (Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services) had an “independent” commission of some distinguished individuals such as its chairman Everett Alvarez. “Ev” as he is known, was a Navy fighter-bomber pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam. The Navy commander spent almost nine years in the notorious prison camp sarcastically-known as the “Hanoi Hilton.”

There were a number of VA hospitals targeted by CARES for closure ranging from New York state’s Canadaigua VA facility to the Waco VA Hospital, now named after Waco-born Messman Doris “Dorie” Miller. Miller a black cook was one if not the first U.S. Navy hero of WWII. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his heroics during the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor. There has been a large admiration society over the years for Miller who believe he should have been a Medal of Honor recipient. However, his race is generally recognized as having kept him from that award.

When the news broke that the VA planned to close the Waco VA hospital, a cry to action quickly happened. A local committee made up of Waco leaders was formed. The then-Congressman for the area Chet Edwards, D-Waco, was on the rise in the Democratic party. He had been considered as a running mate for President Obama. Edwards position and his fervor to help veterans gave the CARES bunch and the VA quite a fight. Eventually the hospital was made a center for mentally ill vets.

The report tonight on Channel 6 mentioned that the U.S. House member representing Orange, Rep. Brian Babin-R, Woodville, had mentioned his willingness to help with the move to get a VA Hospital in Orange. The fact that the Baptist Hospital-Orange shut its doors as an inpatient center, the ER is still open, appears to present an opportunity for the VA to serve what was is estimated 6,000 veterans in Orange County and others in Southeast Texas.

An inpatient VA hospital in Orange, Texas, is nice as a pipe dream. The Strategic Plan for the VA through 2020 isn’t big, it isn’t even small, on more inpatient facilities. The department is still out to close long-established facilities.

I can understand an idealistic young war veteran elected as Orange County Judge, Brint Carlton, believing he can move heaven, earth and the U.S. Government. Congressman Babin is relatively new as a U.S. House member. However, he has been in politics for many years as a small-town mayor and running unsuccessfully for Congress.

Babin’s name became known in a negative light during his unsuccessful campaign against then U.S. Rep. Jim Turner, D-Crockett. As the National Journal reported during Babin’s election campaign to Congress, his Democratic opponent brought up:

” … Babin’s role in a notorious Texas campaign finance scandal, noting that he received $37,000 in illegal corporate money from his friend, (Orange) businessman Peter Cloeren, when he made his first House bid in 1996. Cloeren claimed the idea came from GOP Rep. Tom DeLay—the former House majority leader—but DeLay denied any involvement. Cloeren eventually pleaded guilty to campaign violations and paid a fine of $200,000, while the Federal Election Commission dismissed his claim that DeLay was responsible.

As for Babin, the FEC gave him a pass, ordering him to pay $30,000 in civil fines. The official who let him off the hook was Lois Lerner, the embattled former IRS official who recently was accused of giving extra scrutiny to tea-party groups.”

So Rep. Babin should know better, if no one else around Orange doesn’t. The odds on Orange being even considered for an outpatient facility — with a fairly large one 25 miles away in Beaumont and a huge inpatient hospital in Houston– seem pretty long-range.

Smoke up! Orange would have better luck getting pot legalized.

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TD Bill. Time for you to mosey.

The loud beeps from my work Blackberry and my personal iPhone have unnerved me this afternoon as they do.  Normally, when that happens it is at night, But this, Tropical Depression Bill I believe it is now called, has been pouring down the rain this afternoon.

The flash flood warning for the Beaumont-Port Arthur Metropolitan Area has been extended several hours until 7:45 p.m. CDT for all counties except for the northern part of Newton County. The National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, La., says one to three inches of rain has fallen over the area. I would have to guess that “locally” heavier amounts have fallen.

It's always raining something around Beaumont, Texas
It’s always raining something around Beaumont, Texas

Like all tropical systems, Bill has had its quirks. When it landed on the south-central Texas coast my area on the utmost Texas coast got a serving of on-and-off showers. This started happening more than 24 hours ago. I didn’t go out much yesterday, I had no need to do so. But I walked out a couple of times to the lightest of rain and a nice “breeze” of about 12 mph. As the storm degraded to a tropical depression, the rain has picked up in eastern Texas. Thus, the flash flood warnings.

Those of us here about 30 miles from the Gulf have slight elevation. Beaumont, where I live, is about 16 feet above sea level. I don’t know, if I ever knew, where that “mountain” of elevation is. Perhaps it is at Spindletop, the salt dome where the Lucas Gusher blew in on Jan. 10, 1901. That is the famous gusher that is known as the “birthplace of the modern petroleum industry.” Names such as Texaco and Gulf Oil became familiar after those companies started up after the gusher.

This is all to say that the area around Beaumont is mostly flat as an oil-topped pancake. I have seen a lot of water here in the nearly 10 years I have lived here. Or 12-something if you count two other times I was a resident here. Most of that water came in large amounts, such as with Hurricane Ike which was a flood-surging machine. Many of the other localized floods were just high enough to miss most automobiles. There is a trick in driving through street flooding, at least to get out of it. That involves not creating a wake. Just pretend you are driving a small fishing boat.

It’s still raining. I am no longer working for the week so I can kick back and stay out of the water unless someone wants to pay me to do so.

Bill will be problems for Oklahoma and then off to maybe the Tennessee Valley and beyond once it clears out. Hopefully, we won’t worry about ol’ Bill for much longer. I hope those beyond don’t have to fret about it either.

 

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Waiting on Bill that isn’t Bill as this is written

Update: The National Weather Service forecast station in Lake Charles, La., the forecast office for my area, will have an update on the storm at 7 p.m. CDT and can be watched on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j6DFDSH4Zo

BEAUMONT, Texas

6:15 p.m. CDT

Whoopee!!! It’s hurricane season again. And it looks as if the first tropical disruption might be official this evening. The “whoopee” is facetiousness.

I made a bit of money reporting and writing during the whole Katrina/Rita/Humberto/Ike set of tropical cyclones over the 2005-2008 time frame. Seems like I am leaving one off. I am certain there was another one. It didn’t hit here but there were some evacuations. I can’t remember. So many storms, so few memory cells. Nevertheless, I am here to tell you that tropical storms, hurricanes, pretty much suck. Thought I was going to say “blow” didn’t you? Well, that too.

Hurricanes, even tropical depressions can kill. That doesn’t happen much in the United States with exceptions, such as Katrina the most recent deadly storm. But dangerous tropical cyclones run up huge death tolls in some of the less-developed locales on the planet.

A couple of reasons for the lower body count in the U.S. is not because of the storms itself but because of improved warning systems and folks adhering to those admonitions. Although, some people still aren’t easily warned.

Even today, Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 remains a source of investigation from seemingly every type of social and physical science. A total of about 1,800 people in the U.S. — from Florida and Georgia to Louisiana — died from the storm. The toll in Louisiana alone was almost 1,600 and around 240 in Mississippi. Several reasons were found in studies why Katrina’s casualty count was that on par of a disaster-torn “third-world country.” Flooding and its death toll in New Orleans were directly tied to the collapse of the city’s levee system. Of course, the population of those victims were largely elderly and poor. Many couldn’t evacuate for one reason or the other are were too tied to their property to do so.

This picture taken after Hurricane Katrina in Long Beach, Miss., shows the destruction. The street, Jeff Davis Ave., is at the bottom of the picture is about two football fields away from the Gulf of Mexico. About 25 years before I would go to see my friend Christine who worked about 3/10 of a mile on US 90 at the Waffle House. Time flies like a hurricane. FEMA picture
This picture taken after Hurricane Katrina in Long Beach, Miss., shows the destruction. The street, Jeff Davis Ave., at the bottom of the picture is about two football fields away in distance from the Gulf of Mexico. About 25 years before I would stop for a cup of coffee and to see my friend Christine who worked about 3/10 of a mile on US 90 at the Waffle House. Time flies like a hurricane. FEMA picture

The Mississippi death toll came mostly from storm surge. Some of the victims had rode out the previous killer hurricane Camille and believed if they made it through Camille, they’d make it through this storm. Some did but others didn’t.

I learned a little about hurricanes having gone through those storms. For Rita I evacuated about 60 miles northeast of Beaumont, where I lived, and experienced probably the same amount of wind and rain as had I stayed home. I learned a little more about humanity from those storms as well. Each storm and having written about them gave me a little increased knowledge about hurricanes.

These days I don’t profess to be a hurricane expert. While those storms can be kind of a rush, I still would prefer to read about them than to go through them. As for this little storm off our coast, it will do what it does. It will probably rain an inch or two, which is added to what feels like a ton of rain we have already had this year.

The weather people on TV said the National Weather Service has yet to declare tropical depression or tropical storm warnings for what would be the named storm “Bill” is that the storm is basically not wrapped tight enough. That’s what I get at least. The National Hurricane Center says the storm has a 90 percent chance that it will be a named storm before it comes ashore within the next 12-24 hours. That is despite the storm has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. That is already the speed for a Tropical Storm.

We all learn as we go, right?

 

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Locked inside your car on a hot day isn’t so funny

Something strange happened yesterday that had it not ended in the death of a man the episode might have landed in the “funny” column. Let us expound upon this: It was “funny odd” and not funny “LOL.”

I was downtown on business thus I drove the 2014 Chevrolet Cruze that is my work-mobile. I had just finished having the first oil change for that auto. Perhaps I should point out that it was hot yesterday. How hot was it? Well, the official temp at the Jack Brooks Regional Airport in Nederland was 92 around that same time with a heat index of 102 degrees F. I was near the Port of Beaumont, some 15 miles northwest of the airport. I believe that I read somewhere that the highest point in the county in elevation is 24 feet. Occasionally a sea breeze rolls in some 30 miles away from the Gulf of Mexico. Still, I suppose we can settle upon “hot” as our answer to the question “how hot was it?”

Once I had settled inside the hot Cruze I strapped in and attempted to turn the key. It didn’t turn.

Using my large mechanically-inclined though mostly facetious brain I figured if the key didn’t work nothing else should work. So I combed through the owner’s manual eying the key section. That  selection had a lot of information, I was shown how my key was supposed to work. It even taught me how to start my car remotely. It didn’t tell me what to do if my key did not work.

While sweating profusely inside the sweltering car I began wondering what might happen if I were locked inside. My cell was working so I could call for help. But just to test out conditions I opened my car door. I also was able to use my window buttons. Apparently the key was turned just enough for that.

But I couldn’t figure out why the key didn’t turn all the way over. I finally looked at that GSA help book that was with my car when I first picked it up in Houston some 4,600 miles back. I eventually found a number for a technician. Fortunately, I got a laid back guy on the line who asked a couple of questions. Among those questions, did you try moving the steering wheel back and forth? No, I hadn’t tried that. So I tried that a couple of times and the car ignition fired up like it always did.

The technician teased me saying: “You can send me the check.” I said: “Huh.” It turned out he was joking. It’s easy to get your brain fried in that heat. That’s where I get to the part where the story is not funny (Ha-ha.)

On the local news last night I heard about Port Arthur police finding a man dead in his car outside the Waffle House on Jimmy Johnson Boulevard. Yes, it’s that Jimmy Johnson, the coach. He is a native of Port Arthur. So is Janis Joplin. So is rapper Bun B and so was his late rapping partner Pimp C. I’ve been to that same Waffle House before. Some nice people work there. The Waffle House is also only a mile or so from the airport, the official weather station,

The victim, who was known to frequent the restaurant for coffee and to charge his cell phone, died along with his dog inside a 2007 Corvette. Police said he had apparently attempted to get out of his car but was unable to do so. One TV report indicated he might have become stuck while trying to exit through the back window.

Police officers said a battery cable apparently became loose which caused the electronic doors to lock inside. According to this You Tube video produced by a man who sells the Corvettes, the G6 generation of the cars have alternate ways to both enter and exit when ea battery loses power. If outside, there is an actual key inside the fob that allows the driver to open a rear lock hidden from sight. Once inside, a mechanical device inside the rear of the car can be pulled to open the door. If locked on the inside, a lever with a red marking is located on the outside of the seat.

This linked article indicated the victim’s relatives said the “proximity key” worked sometimes but not at others. I am not really sure what that has to do with getting locked inside. The car is supposedly a G6. I’m not sure how long the man had the car or how familiar with his means of entrance and egress. On the other hand, there could have been a malfunction in the front lever and perhaps he indeed became stuck trying to use the rear exit handle.

I really don’t know what happened to the deceased. The incident certainly left a great deal of questions.