Eight Feet Deep

President Obama threw in the domestic kitchen sink last evening during his first State of the Union address.

Politicians, especially first term presidents, tend to do that. Of course, Obama had a lot to cover. The nation’s average unemployment rate being in double digits alone could have taken half of the ground Obama marched over during his  70-minute speech.

As a State of the Union speech goes, it was very good. Obama was not Barack the law professor. Instead, he was Barack the populist president.

Of course, the cable media had to stir up a controversy where there really had not been one. I’m speaking of the president’s rebuke of the Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited dollars on political campaigns. Some members of the high court were sitting near the president and during what was a polite but forceful dart, Justice Samuel Alito silently mouthed something like “not true.” It’s not like Alito told the president “f**k you.” Or he didn’t yell out: “You lie” as  Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., did during Obama’s address on health care reform last year during a joint session of Congress.

Obama covered a lot of ground, including his belief that now is the time to scrap “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow gays to openly serve in the military. The cameras on the Joint Chiefs of Staff showed its members in a grim state. But the president was right on this one.

The argument against gays “telling” in the service is about 9/10ths political and 1/10th religious. Which, if you really take the macro look at it, it’s either 100 percent political or 100 percent religious. This is because the political argument is mostly fueled by the religious right, who in turn, pressure the politicians.

One example against gays in the military used 30 years ago when I was in the service was that the enemy could possibly capture a gay service member and blackmail him to reveal classified material by using the service person’s homosexuality against him. (I use “him” because the “hims” were mostly those in such situations. Today, there are plenty of “hers” serving in dangerous and sensitive military positions.) If the military person was openly gay, such blackmail attempts would mostly prove moot.

What many soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and coasties — some women but I think mostly men — would be most concerned with if they are not for open “gayness” in the service might perhaps being hit on by someone of their own gender. You might ask one of these brave souls and they’d tell you “no way.” But until these mostly young males and even some females make peace with themselves about their own sexuality, being a straight who is hit on by a gay can be disconcerting, and for some might rarely spark violence. But the same could probably be said about some straight guy hitting on your girlfriend.

The bottom line is if gays are openly admitted in the service and you are upset at having a pass made at you, you can file the same complaints with superiors as when an unwelcome pass by someone of the opposite sex  is made. And yes, sometimes it is difficult to see justice done with that. Nonetheless, fair is fair. Plus we don’t have a military draft and we need people, especially intelligent and talented people — gay or straight — to provide for our national security.

I liked, as well, how the president basically told both parties they act like jackasses, and that his own party needs to grow a (some) pair (s).

I did dislike one of the president’s proposals. That was his proposed government spending freeze beginning in FY 2011. Previous limited budget increases for government agencies have contributed to poor equipment and half-ass training. If the government doesn’t have time or a little extra money to update outmoded equipment and fully train their employees, it will lead to both a total breakdown in services as well as costing more in the end when people or things fail to work as they should.

Think about that one, Mr. Prez.

All in all, I think the President did a fine job on, at least my opinion for now, what I hope to be many more SOTU addresses over the next three-to-seven years.

Do you remember the song “Dem Bones?”

It is an old spiritual allegedly used to teach children basic anatomy even though the song is anatomically incorrect, all according to Wikipedia. Though there is no doubt of the connection between the song and the verse from “Ezekiel 37:1-14” where the profit pays a visit to the Valley of Dry Bones and through God’s command causes the bones to come alive.

Anatomically correct or not, the song in its simple way speaks to the connection and oneness of the human body. The body is such an intricate mechanism, like in many ways a fine automobile or space ship or aircraft. Often when one part of the body has a problem it can cause a glitch in another location that even sometimes seems silly to the mind not trained in at least a bit of gross anatomy.

Physicians are trained in more than a bit of gross anatomy and they know, or should know, much more than the rest of the population of these intricate interrelationships within the body which can cause something somewhere to go wrong and make a body miserable elsewhere.

I known my physicians, who work for the Department of Veterans Affairs, know all that. However, I don’t know if they are too hurried or harried or caught up in some kind of mindset that so often find themselves unable to see the forest of the body for the tree trunks.

 As I mentioned here last week after my MRI at the Houston VA, three different possible causes emerged for the painful peripheral neuropathy I have suffered in my feet and legs since the summer. One reason is Type II diabetes, which was promptly diagnosed after a lot of talk about it. Another reason was a type of fatty tissue causing stenosis of my lumbar spine and the other reason being an untreatable and possibly debilitating inflammation of one of the spine’s membranes.

So which condition does my specialist pick on which to focus? Why diabetes, of course. And I’ll be brutally frank, if the VA wants me to be treated for diabetes, they sure are picking a funny way to do it. Here is this glucometer and an instruction book. Good luck with your diabetes. Oh, we will fit you with some special shoes, but we can’t mail them to you. You’ll have to come back to Houston for them. No instruction on the diet and lifestyle that is needed to lose weight and pills to help combat the high blood sugar levels. That is the VA’s other answer for all that ails you: meds.

I find myself in a vicious medical circle in which none of my medical professionals have seemed to figure a way out for me. I ballooned in weight. My blood sugar went up at a marginal rate. I developed peripheral neuropathy — a condition very often caused by diabetes but also caused by perhaps more than 100 other reasons as well — the pain cut down on my walking for exercise to almost nothing. My weight ballooned even more. My blood sugar got higher. In the meantime, a MRI finds other problems not related to diabetes that are causing similar symptoms which include neuropathy. I also suffer from often severe back pain as well as shooting pain in my hip and leg. Oh, and let’s not forget that I developed a hand tremor two years ago. Just a coincidence I guess, huh?

So my specialist in Houston says lose weight and lower your blood sugar. We’ll attack the diabetes. Why? Well, my weight and blood sugar both needs to decrease. But also, diabetes is the easier, or perhaps, the only one of the three that can be treated. Good luck. See you in a month.

I don’t understand why the body can’t be seen as a whole, a system? That’s what it is. It’s true, all I can treat is the diabetes as far as I know. But one of the conditions I have been diagnosed with has similar symptoms as diabetes, including weight gain, and it can potentially paralyze or kill you.

Once again, for however many times, the VA has taken me out into the woods and left me to find my way home by myself. I have, at least for the unforeseeable future or perhaps the rest of my life, chronic pain that can’t be treated. It can’t even be treated by the methadone I take for pain at the opposite end of the spine from this problem. Yet, I have to somehow get up in the morning, work, live, keep going. My body might break down along the way, it might not.

I am not pleading for sympathy. There is no need for it. Like they said in olden times: “It ain’t nothin’ but a thang.” I am, instead, just talking out loud. Pretty loud at that. I am kind of going through what the late Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described as the “Five Stages of Grief” in her acclaimed book “On Death and Dying.” Those stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, although not all of those stages are reached and not necessarily in any order.

Right now I am in denial and anger over being diagnosed as diabetic. I am angry that, at least my specialist thinks, nothing can done about my most recent chronic pain. I am also depressed. I haven’t reached the bargaining and acceptance stage.

If nothing else, these stages present a way to look at the process of working out a significant problem. If my memory from classes that I took while attaining a minor in sociology — including a course on death and dying — serves me right the whole grief thing works on romantic breakups and various other traumas. It’s funny. The last “romantic” breakup I had a couple of years ago revealed only, perhpas, the acceptance stage and none of the other five. I suppose that could be like the exchange method of dieting, I could exchange two of glee for one of depression.

Leave ’em laughing. Sorry, I am just talking to myself.

 Who Dat?

 What more might I really say after the thrilling overtime win the Saints foist upon the Vikings. Well, perhaps Garrett Harley’s 40-yard field goal was a bit thrilling. The Zebras stopping what seemed like every play after the OT began was getting tedious.

 I must admit though, a TV shot of where Hartley was and where he would have to kick the ball made me believe that this thing wasn’t going to work. It seemed like he had to boot the thing for miles! I really didn’t want to watch. I didn’t want to but did and I couldn’t even tell it went through because for some reason my reception on the local Fox channel here in Beaumont, Texas, sucks. It probably is the fault of the cable provider, the always helpful Time-Warner.

 But the Zebras lifted their hands upward toward the heavens. And the Ain’ts were no longer the Aint’s they had been for the better part of 40-something years. They were the NFC Champions!

 Poor Old Man Favre. I really don’t know what to make of that dude. I want to like him but he seems as if he teeters on the edge of macho drama queen. He sure got his a** waxed yesterday. He should have been totally rested after the game considering the number of times that dude got knocked down. But there isn’t too many like him. Many are cold but few are frozen. That is except for Peyton.

 Manning just needed the time to figure it all out. That was what that first half was about. And I needed to do my taxes anyway. After I figured out how to get back into the tax program I’ve used for the last four years, it didn’t take long at all and got a decent refund — perhaps in as little as a week — to boot. I was finished by the start of the second half of Colts vs. Jets.

 Oh and Sanchez. He had a nice ride as a rookie. Now he has to start playing some NFL-style football. Like I could carry his shoulder pads. Or for any other pro football player for that matter. But everyone can be a Monday-morning quarterback, no matter what time of day it might really be.

 Peyton Manning. There is no football player anywhere like him as far as I know. He will be the deciding factor come kickoff for the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks. That is, following an afternoon filled with your standards Super Bowl hype. Yes, I wish Peyton the best but wish Drew Brees the mo’ better.

 In the end, I will root for my next door neighbors in Nawlins. They have something to cheer about a long time coming.

Normally, I’m not a big fan of Politico.

The MSM-ish, all-the-politics-all-the-time Web product once occupied a place on my blogroll when I was using Blogspot. But I tired of their cable news-like approach to political reporting. That approach is basically summed up in one word: drama. If there is no drama, create some. Plus political gossip is found there more often than not. I don’t like that. But that’s just me, the old-time newspaper guy who had to count headlines and paste-up pages in the early days of his career. I’m certain there are those print guys much older, or who started before me, who really are the old-timers. I’m just being half-ass facetious.***

With all that blather I speak of Politico because there is a very good article on it today which cites reasons the Republican Party isn’t as well off as many believe it to be. Politico founder and executive editor Jim VandeHei and writer James Hohmann report that a few unexpected victories, including that most recently of nude model Scott Brown who took the Kennedy Senate seat, have the GOP riding high.

But while some Republicans lick their chops at the prospect at taking over Congress in November, other GOP-ers are saying not so fast.

VandeHei and Hohmann point out that the poll numbers show what everyone including Republicans should know, that the public is not crazy about the Grand Old Party. The speculation mentioned in this article gives the GOP an outside chance at re-taking the Senate and a fatter chance at ruling the House. The article also correctly points that this is January and November will be in November.

Republican leaders say part of their problem is getting their agenda out there. Other party leaders fret that the GOP lacks a brand. Meanwhile, party minority whip Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia wrings his hands over a lack of diversity among candidates.

Other formidable problems also puzzle the GOP elite. The public likes President Barack Obama, for one, and, correctly, feel like he inherited a big financial mess from Gee Dubya Bush. Money, or lack thereof, is perhaps the biggest problem facing Republicans, according to VandeHei and Hohmann. We’re talking campaign cash and not a Washington bailout.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for the Republicans to overcome is not mentioned in the article, as informative as it is. That is the party has a big case of see no evil, hear no evil, fear no evil.

For instance, the perceived agenda problem. What agenda are they talking about? I suppose if they had an agenda other than being super-obstructionist, then that would be a problem. They have no problem promoting their agenda if it is attacking everything done by the Democrats.

And as for lacking a brand, why the GOP has unfortunately branded themselves already as the Obstructionist-Pig-headed-Bassackwards-Reactionary party. Cantor does see the forest for the trees at least for the diversity problem. But — and perhaps fate is involved here — everything the Republicans do turns to feces. The same can be said of their diversity hire program. I give you exhibit A, Republican party chairman Michael Steele.

The GOP needs money yet they always seem to find some spare change lying around. However, the whole animus towards Republicans today is based on the fact that most folks who are not Republicans and even many Republicans themselves think the party and its leaders — whomever they are — stinks to high heaven.

The Politico article is a great read and will only take up a few minutes of your time. I think whether you are Republican, Democrat or Save the Bluenose Rat partisans you will find something instructive on what the GOP looks like at the moment. If you are a Republican you might come down off your high from winning in Massachusetts a few moments, but that could be a good thing to think about which way your party is headed. If you are a Democrat you might be a bit encouraged, but not too much.

As for as the Independents and Bluenose Rat lovers, well you can take what you will from it. All in all, the piece is one Politico could use more of instead of the gossip and faux drama that too often fills up the site.

***In reality I shouldn’t be so hard on Politico. VandeHei is a longtime journalist who covered the White House and other political matters for The Washington Post as well as other distinguished newspapers. The site is doing something new and I give them a B for effort. But I give them a D for overall content for the reasons to which I alluded.