Eight Feet Deep

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., poses with two future cabinet members on a campaign swing in her quest for Democratic presidential nominee.

Some people may think Hillary Clinton is on the right track with her new health care plan which would require all Americans to have health insurance. I am not one of those people.

First of all, too little specificity is out there about how such a plan would operate and more importantly so is the question of what happens to those who would inevitably fall through the cracks.

Under the Clinton plan the cost of health insurance would be on a percentage of income. That makes me wonder, what percentage might that be?

Requiring health insurance is reminiscent of being required to carry liability on your automobile. Some people can’t afford the mainstream companies so they have to rely on companies who offer cheaper coverage but who knows just how those carriers would react if you actually had an accident and had to rely on that coverage.

And what would become of my coverage? I receive health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. But the closest VA hospital is 90 miles away so if I have to go to the emergency room I must go to a private hospital and the VA will only pay under certain circumstances. Usually, the VA will try to get out of paying for your ER visit. In the meantime, the hospital, the emergency physician, the radiologist and the cardiologist all are sending you bills or turning your account over to collection agencies while you either wait for the VA to pay or you appeal their decision. I am in the process of trying to get the VA to pay bills for three ER visits over the past two years. They have so far denied two of my claims and I have appealed those decisions.

So health insurance for everyone sounds good but so would presidential candidates saying, if they are elected, each adult will be given a million dollars and every kid would get a pony.

With the crop of presidential candidates on both sides, it seems I may once again have to write in Willie Nelson’s name on the ballot.

So much is going on these days to ridicule and so little time …

The Ojays

Remember that song by the Ojays, “The Back Stabber?” Well, that is not what I aim to discuss briefly. It’s the other OJ, or as his Clark County, Nev., jail record reads:

02648927 SIMPSON, ORENTHAL J 60 Black Male
ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
ROBBERY WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
ROBBERY WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
BURGLARY WITH USE OF DEADLY WEAPON
CONSP ROBBERY WITH A DEADLY WEAPON

There isn’t much to see on the jail record other than the above but if you want to check it out, go here and enter “Simpson.” You’ll get Orenthal if he is still in custody or perhaps even Bart and Homer.

Gee Dubya names new A Gee

U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, chief judge of the Southern New York district, was nominated today to be Gee Dubya’s third attorney general. The last two picks were stone cold losers so, for the sake of the nation, let’s hope the third one is a charm. But somehow I doubt it.

Speaking of three-time losers

One thing I can say about the Grand Old Party is that they certainly have a plethora of choices when it comes to potential presidential candidates. Now that is even more the case since Alan Keyes has decided on a third (most likely failing) try for the Republican presidential nomination.

He was a GOP throw-down candidate in the Illinois senate race in which Barack Obama beat Keyes by almost 45 points, or as football coaches here in Texas like to say, “beaten like a rented mule.” I almost feel sorry for him but Keyes is a grown man and he should learn from his mistakes — if not three times then perhaps from a fourth.

The Cheek fire station just outside Beaumont, Texas, took a beating after Hurricane Rita in September 2005.

One can hardly tell from riding around Beaumont, Texas, today that it was hit by a Category 1 hurricane in the early morning hours of the day before. That is likely not the case around the area where Humberto made landfall but the pictures and video I saw yesterday indicated we got a pretty good blow through here some 40 or so miles from the beach. I was, as I have mentioned, asleep through it all.

The lack of storm evidence was unlike when I returned to Beaumont a week after Hurricane Rita knocked the hell out the town and everything north and south for a hundred miles.

But the similarities of the two storms come together when you talk about inconvenience. Both storms caused some inconvenience. Several places I stopped at to grab lunch yesterday were not open. Today the Market Basket store on Phelan was awaiting a shipment of ice so I tried their store on 11th Street which had plenty.

Many are going through much more inconvenience than I am today. There are still tens of thousands of people without electricity. I am not one of them and my lights lit up just one day after returning from Rita evacuation. That is I suppose a benefit of living close to one of the city’s hospitals, the noisy helicopter ambulance not withstanding. I am sure the electric companies try to get the sick and injured some juice before many others. By contrast, my brother who lives up in the Pineywoods was without power for a month after Rita. Perhaps others won’t have to wait so long this time because of less damage. Convoys of electric power company trucks could be seen pouring into town yesterday and today so perhaps most people can watch the football games on Sunday.

As was the case with Rita there is really nothing for me to complain about. Rita was a lot more inconvenient but I didn’t lose anything in either storm nor did my relatives as far as I know. About half the carpet in my basement office downtown was soaked but luckily other people are paid — most likely not nearly enough — to deal with that.

Sometimes it takes a great force as that seen from nature to make you really appreciate your situation. In that respect, at least, hurricanes aren’t all bad.

Hurricane Humberto is heading toward us. “This is going to be a rainmaker,” says the guy on CBS News. Yeah, I think so. It is raining outside and the rain is getting more intense. It might be a good time to walk outside and soap myself. But that probably would not be cool with otras. La.

It seems Humberto is the big weather story across the country this evening and the Weather Channel is making it sound as if this quick-forming tropical storm will wipe us here on the extreme Upper Texas Coast off the map. That is kind of hysterical actually because usually the Weather Channel acts as we here on the Gulf Texas and Louisiana border don’t exist. I mean, we live here in a metropolitan area even though it is a small metropolitan area.

None the less, (yes I spelled it that way — artistic license or rather driving without an artistic license)the major portion of Humberto seems to be heading right towards us here in the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange-Hardin County-Greater Kountze Metropolitan area.

Since I finally signed up for mobile broadband (albeit slow as Christmas)and since I don’t really have to go to work at my part-time job depending on the weather, I thought I would live blog Humberto.

Our most dependable weather forecasters at KFDM Channel 6, with Greg Bostwick watching things this evening, seem to think Humberto will make landfall in the early hours of the morning. There is even a remote chance it could make hurricane before it arrives but that’s pretty remote. Now, I am not going to stay up all night unless I can help it. But I might send out a dispatch or two for the two or three of you out there who regularly read EFD. Okay, I’m exaggerating, the one-or-two. Whatever.

By the way, I like the music the Weather Channel has playing during “Weather on the Eights, Pink Floyd maybe?