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PT Barnum bested by Trump: Uses vets for a prop

Here is a mark of honor: Donald Trump has surpassed P.T. Barnum as the all-time American huckster. His sleight of hand was masterful in capturing major media attention Thursday evening after declaring he would not participate in a Fox News debate for Republican presidential candidates.

To his dishonor, Trump used his Iowa sideshow to his political advantage by cooking up a telethon for veterans causes, although there are vets who say the event was a con. Trump said he raised almost $7 million which will be distributed among a number of veterans organizations. Several of these groups I recognize but others I don’t — not to say anything is amiss with these organizations.

Thumbs up for, perhaps, the greatest American huckster.

As a veteran, I have and still do champion veterans and legitimate vet organizations. But I am not alone in feeling that his stunt did little more than use veterans as a prop.

While there are only early ratings numbers — and the first primary vote has yet to be cast for the November General Election — Trump is a shoo-in to surpass the long-gone Barnum as the All-Time World Champion con man.

Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum was a celebrated 19th century showman who founded the Barnum and Bailey Circus. He was likewise known for sideshows with “freaks” and coining the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Like Trump, Barnum also dabbled in politics as a Connecticut legislator and mayor of Bridgeport, Conn.

P.T. Barnum, king of the hucksters until now. The King is Trumped. Wikipedia Commons photo.
P.T. Barnum, king of the hucksters until now. The King is Trumped. Wikipedia Commons photo.

Also like Trump, Barnum was a human contradiction. PT vigorously denounced slavery although he was the founding father of the black-face minstrel show. And although he used that form of entertainment for financial gain, the shows were often satire of the white men who felt superior to blacks.

Barnum also sponsored legislation that had a long-lasting effect, with that law’s judicial abolition leading to the “Sexual Revolution.”

The Connecticut General Assembly passed the law Barnum sponsored in 1879 which led to the ban on means of preventing conception. That state’s laws were among the most severe anti-birth control measures. It was only in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut that the law was overturned. Even beyond a change in the nature of American sexuality, the case also concluded that certain articles of the Constitutional Amendments established the right to privacy.

Trump might have been an equal, or perhaps better, than Barnum had The Donald lived in the 19th century. Of course, Trump came up in a time — aided by his financial gain by birth — when media is faster and more (world)widespread. Were Trump just another of Sam Walton’s rich offspring his effect on society might be barely noticed. That might be true to a lesser degree even if Trump was a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

But Donald J. Trump is The Donald. He’s had his ups and downs but at least says he is the one on top. He created big worlds and married world-class beauties. And to top it off, he became a TV star in his “reality” series, “The Apprentice.”

Will Trump become president is the multi-billion-dollar question. Early on after his initial announcement, I thought “no way.” I still feel that way but the older I get the more the “way” outweighs the “no way.”

I think if people who support Trump realizes how he would walk over his mother to get his way — though he might shed a tear doing it– perhaps they would understand how similar PT and The Donald were.

Donald Trump isn’t the first presidential candidate, nor if elected, president, to use the military and veterans as props. It is certainly beyond distasteful to me as well as other veterans. But hey, it’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

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VA medical care perseveres despite a few challenges. Some timely and others … ?

More often than not the Department of Veterans Affairs manages to deliver adequate to exceptional health care for former service members. This is done despite many challenges. Just a few examples:

  • A history of inadequate funding. In addition to the incredible numbers of jackasses and fools the American public has elected to Congress, the type of funding for the VA itself does not encourage planning for a steady stream of dollars. That is because the VA does not have full mandatory funding. Much of the veterans healthcare program comes from discretionary funding over which congressional members can wheel and deal to get pork barrel dollars for their districts. Full mandatory spending does not seem likely in the near future. And the Continuing Resolution that was passed to keep the government running expires on Dec. 11. That is something I don’t want to think about.
  • The clusterf**k that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney et. al. got us into will likely send more veterans to war and return them home — with various health and mental problems — which strains the budget even more.
  • The dead weight from the high-dollar VA executives who, while relatively small in number, will continually find reward for their greed. Meanwhile, what does that do for the rank and file?
  • Timeliness. The wait for appointments have improved though not uniformly. Medicines that are shipped in the mail get lost. Why can’t you just get more medicine to replace what hasn’t arrived? Sometimes you can. Lost in the mail is still a problem and not just with meds.

So, I give the VA give a pass for many of the screw-ups I have seen during my time as a VA patient and as a journalist who covered the Department for nearly a decade. That isn’t easy though.

My patience is tested on a number of occasions when I have to drive around for 45 minutes to an hour at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston to find a parking place in just one parking lot. The Houston VA has signs that announce something to the effect of: Good news. We are building a new parking structure. But in the meanwhile take advantage of our valet service.

I don’t want wait another hour for a valet to take my auto. I don’t like other people to drive my 17-year-old Toyota Tacoma. It has to last me for some time and I would not at all like someone screwing up my pickup.

The VA phone system in Houston has long been a contentious issue with me. It does seem to have slightly improved. I am afraid to say that, though, because I am afraid something will screw it up. I think a lot of myself, huh? Well, a VA counselor playing psychiatrist gave me a diagnosis as having a “narcissistic personality disorder.” I guess that makes me a narcissist then. Yep.

Finally, today in the mail I received one of the “new” cards from the VA reminding me of my appointments. These two cards are printed on all four sides and are held together by a perforated strip. They replace the old letters notifying veterans of appointments.

On the side with my address it says: “Dated Material — Open Immediately.” This makes me think: “Are they going to send the VA Police to arrest me because I didn’t open the card immediately?”

So I opened it within 30 minutes or so, only to find:

“ALERT! Unfortunately, your upcoming appointment has been cancelled. This appointment is cancelled: Date :Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015 … “

Oops.

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Navy launches missile. Southern Californians freak out.

Living where I do there are all sorts of catastrophes that are waiting to happen. I say that in light of all the supposedly “terrified” folks in the Los Angeles area who freaked last week when they saw a missile test just after sundown. The Los Angeles Times newspaper reports that a second and final missile was fired this afternoon off the California Coast.

Everywhere, at least in SoCal, people are “skeered.” At least that is what the media reports.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Navy photo of nuclear anti-sub rocket in 1962 from the destroyer USS Agerholm.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The destroyer USS Agerholm fires an atomic rocket in 1962.

I live in Beaumont, Texas. It is certainly a blip compared to Los Angeles, although, just a few miles from where I live is the nation’s fourth largest port in tonnage. The Port of Beaumont sits on the Neches River, at the northwestern leg of the Sabine-Neches Waterway. The 79-mile-long ship channel serves one of the largest petrochemical producing areas in the U.S. The port is also a “military outload” port. I saw weird bubble-wrapped helicopters being loaded during the prelude to the Second Iraq War, not to mention a plethora of tanks, fighting vehicles and assorted items most of which were covered in desert camo.

The waterway juts northward to the Port of Orange on the Sabine River. Just south of the confluence of both rivers is the Port of Port Arthur. That confluence is Sabine Lake, which is more of a bay than a lake. At the tip of the water way is Sabine Pass, where a small port sits. Also, two liquefied natural gas or LNG terminals are being built on either side of the lake. One is at Sabine Pass, the other near Cameron, Louisiana.

So, were one to be terrified of what might happen, this could be the place for you. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, fifth and ninth in tonnage respectfully, also makes for a scary place. There are refineries in that area as well and lots of varied military activity to the north and south of Los Angeles. This brings me to the big Pacific scare.

Now maybe people were really terrified. I don’t know. I bet some hipster sitting in his back yard looking over the ocean and tripping his ass off on acid had a real rush. But these type of things happen quite often off the Southern California coast. Take San Clemente Island, not to be confused on San Clemente, the city between San Diego and L.A. and the place where Tricky Dick Nixon used to live.

San Clemente Island sits to the southwest of Santa Catalina Island. The former is officially uninhabited. That is a good thing because the island has been, for years, a Navy missile and shipboard gunfire range. It is probably more of the former these days as Navy ships are more missile oriented these days. The ship I served a year on in the Navy was a World War II-era gun destroyer although it could fire “rocket assisted projectiles.” The armament system was called an ASROC, for Anti submarine rocket. The Agerholm, the ship on which I served, fired the first and I guess only, nuclear-tipped ASROC

The rocket test, called “Swordfish,” was part of a series of nuclear tests in the early 1960s, most of the tests were air drops from B-52s and were in the South Pacific Ocean. Swordfish took place about 400 nautical miles — about 460 miles — west of San Diego. According to information on the test, the 20 kilo-ton device was fired about 1 p.m. local time on May 11, 1962, from the Agerholm. The nuke’s so-called “yield,” the energy unleashed in the bomb, was approximately that of the “Fat Man” bomb detonated over Nagasaki. A raft some 4,300 yards — some 2.5 miles — away was the target for the ASROC.

 “The rocket missed its sub-surface zero point by 20 yards and exploded 40 seconds later at a depth of 650 feet in water that was 17,140 feet deep,” according to nuclearweaponarchive.org.

 “The spray dome from the detonation was 3000 feet across, and rose to 2100 feet in 16 seconds. The detonation left a huge circle of foam-covered radioactive water. Within two days it had broken up into small patches and spread out for 5 to 8 miles.”

Operation Dominic took place about 15 years before I reported aboard the Agerholm. Was nuclear fallout still on the ship when I boarded her in the former Todd Shipyard facility in Long Beach, Calif? I don’t know.

Now the majority of stories on the test firings from the ballistic submarine USS Kentucky speculate whether the Navy was trying to send some message. I think the answer is “yes.” The very being of the U.S. Navy sends a message, as in the photo above being an extreme example. Some believe the people should be forewarned of such tests. The Navy says “Sorry, we can’t tell you when this missile will launch, top secret.” I would bet if something like the picture above appeared off the coast of L.A., people really would freak-out. And they’d have every right to be scared.

I conclude with this tip: Assume the Navy will test fire a missile in the water — somewhere!

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The internet and the ‘medical student syndrome’

Ed. note: Once again I have been editing after posting. This time I have been receiving help from Japan. So, hold on to your laptop, I might just edit some more.

There is a study I would like to see, and if you have seen such a study, please send it to our e-mail address. This study would gauge how people value (or no) that be-all-end-all tool, the internet. The study I’d like to see would measure quality of information and whether one often finds the quantity of the results too overwhelming. For instance, asking a question formed as such:

“How well does information you receive from the internet help you understand subjects you research?

A. The information is usually helpful in understanding a subject.

B. The information is occasionally helpful.

C. The information is mostly confusing and does not help me understand.

Think about the questions and answers regardless of how well they are constructed. I would pick B. That does not bode well for the internet if a representative sample of users — and definitely not an internet-based query — come to the same conclusion.

I have found the “information superhighway” can cause a 40-car-collision of data overload. In life before the internet I had similar experiences.

I came to that conclusion some 15 years before I ever heard the word “internet” and first used a rudimentary internet connection in my work as a journalist. When I first began training as an emergency medical technician, I had no idea that training would lead to what is a somewhat well-known syndrome.

Some call it “Medical Student Disease” while others describe it as a syndrome rather than a disease. You say potato. I say tuber. Some in the medical profession prefer to call it “nosophobia.”  While that term seems as if a person is afraid of noses — and I’ve found a few scary schnozzolas in my time — the term denotes a fear of illness. Apparently, someone felt that future doctors should not be characterized as hypochondriacs. Hey, if the shoe fits, oh wait, we’re getting off on the wrong foot here. Someone call a podiatrist!

I’m not an EMT anymore. I let my certification lapse almost three dozen years ago. But I was pretty much a hypochondriac for a little while. I finally came to the realization that I am not having this or that problem. No knee problems or back problems or heart problems. I had the majority of those medical experiences in more recent times with the exception of the latter.

I had several tests this year on my heart. It is practical that a man now 60 years old — ugh, that still is a little hard to accept — have testing done on their ticker. This is especially so because several family members had heart problems. I have had high blood pressure, controlled, with medicine for almost 20 years. I’m diabetic. I’m overweight. I haven’t touched any form of tobacco in 15 years. But the bad news is I may have problems with breathing because I smoked two packs a day for about half of 25 years.

Over the last year I’ve had three different types of cardiac testing. The first was an echocardiogram. It appeared to show a slight enlargement in the left portion of my heart. My cardiologist at the VA said that the enlargement was not anything of major alarm. Yeah, but it’s not his heart.

I had shortness of breath upon landing in Albuquerque, N.M. back in July. Upon deplaning I walked up into the jet way and upon reaching the waiting area I had to stop and catch my breath. My breath was already waiting in the Super Shuttle. I experienced breathing problems a few times in ABQ, which is right at a mile high in elevation. I did some reading on the internet and found that even though altitude sickness is found in people somewhere above 8,000 feet it can be seen in people below that altitude. One also has to realize I left a place just a few feet above sea level for almost 30,000 feet while flying in a jet airliner. And I never came down, so to speak, until I returned Southeast Texas,

The shortness of breath also became a reason for the docs wanting a bit more testing.  About two weeks ago I had an “imaging” stress test. This is where one is injected with a medicine that makes your heart beat more rapidly. My heart was not beating very fast. The cardiologist suspected a blood pressure medicine was causing the slow pulse. I quit the meds and my pulse was back to normal.

On Monday I had a “nuclear” stress test. This test involves a radioactive camera injected via IV inside one’s blood and allows pictures to show a much better view of inside the heart. Better than the outside looking in, I suppose.

I got my test results today via email from a physician assistant in the cardio department at the Houston VA. I immediately began looking on the internet for answers — more results than I probably needed —  that explained what the PA was actually saying. I understood that the testing had what was called a normal “ejection factor.” Looking it up on the internet I found the percentage that was given in my results is normal. But what were reputable internet sites also explained that a normal result does not mean a patient cannot also have had so-called “silent heart attacks” or congestive heart failure.

I was getting back into “medical student syndrome” mode with a bit of a furrowed brow when my cardiologist called and told me the test showed my heart was normal in how well the heart pumps with each beat. He said these pictures showed a much better view than the previous echocardiogram. What that means is I have no apparent heart problems. So what do I do? I just wait and see if I have any other symptoms of heart disease.

My relapse of nosophobia or whatever one cares to call it was brought on today by the internet. That and a little more information than I likely needed, or at least information that made sense. The only problem I have now is that I am obsessing over noses. Where’s Barbra Streisand when you need her?

 

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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.