Eight Feet Deep

Some call ours a “nanny” society. Those who do so, most often derisively, often point toward the many laws which may have good intentions but either should not be statutory or are just plain silly. Sometimes these well-intentioned actions result in adverse consequences.

This is mentioned because of my belief that a bill headed toward passage in the Texas Legislature was introduced with hopes of preventing problems with supposed addicting prescription medication such as Soma, Xanax or Lortab. These drugs form a so-called “pain cocktail” given to patients by some pain management specialists.

A number of pain clinics, which local law enforcement officers claim have popped up recently in Southeast Texas, apparently have exclusively given the aforementioned pain cocktail drugs to patients who may be “doctor shopping.” That term, for those who might not know or are too wasted to remember, refers to the practice of patients seeking different physicians so that they may easily be written prescriptions for the pain cocktail and other drugs such as Oxycontin. Authorities had alleged that such a practice had been used by Rush Limbaugh for his Oxycontin addiction but found a lack of evidence and the great windbag got a plea bargain.

Some pharmacists in Southeast Texas have refused to fill new prescriptions for patients who use what they see as essentially pain pill mills. Pharmacists say they are taking a hit moneywise in order to prevent addiction and practices by some addicts such as armed robbery or burglary to get their meds. The Texas Medical Board is also cracking down on some of the doctors who run some of the alleged pill mills.

Those affected pharmacists in Southeast Texas, along with area law enforcement, thought legislation was required to curb what they see as widespread pill-shopping from running rampant.

Luckily for them, the Texas Legislature just happens to be meeting these days in Austin. So, a bill was introduced by area lawmakers, state Sen. Tommy Williams and Rep. Mike Hamilton, both Republicans, that would tighten up the prescription drug laws. Under the law, doctors would be required to report so-called “Schedule III” drugs such as Xanax and Soma, to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The DPS would monitor the patterns of such prescriptions and who knows where that will go.

While this bill may have been introduced with good intentions, I can’t help but wonder if it will produce unintended consequences which might harm a lot of people.

As one who suffers from chronic pain, I think the situation already exists which make getting which drugs one needs (pardon my English) a pain in the ass.

My medication is the highly-addictive and tightly-controlled methadone. I must go to a doctor once a month to get my prescription refilled. There is no calling the doc to phone in a prescription if I run short. Of course, I go to the Department of Veterans Affairs for treatment where getting a doctor to call you back or call in a medication is almost an impossibility as it is.

If I wasn’t treated by the VA, I wonder how much someone like myself with no insurance would pay for a doctor’s visit each month and prescriptions? Or, would I even be able to get the pain meds that I need?

Yes, it is an inconvenience and it is one I tolerate because it’s necessary to obtain the drugs I need. But you have doctors who refuse to prescribe some of these drugs because they are so addictive and pharmacists who won’t fill them because they might get robbed or sued if one of their drug-addled customers OD. And, it certainly seems that such situations combined with stricter laws — no matter how well-meant — could ultimately lead to some people not getting the medicine they need to function and live a productive life. Also, it is impossible to know what the DPS might pull out of their hat. Will the state police tell us when and when not we may get our pain medication? Tell me Nurse Ratched?

This bill will probably pass as legislators like to pass bills whenever restricting drug use is an issue. But as we all know, just because it is a law does not equate with its goodness.

Newt, Newt, Newt. Can you imagine a president named Newt? Now if your name is Newt, I apologize. But the old argument of what if someone disparaged your name doesn’t quite ascend in such instances when your name is Dick.

The real name of former U.S. House speaker is Newton Gingrich, Newt for short. Although his moniker has a giggly ring to it, my opinion is that he, too, should be named Dick.

Gingrich is playing coy about running for president. I suppose that is in case the current pack of jackasses in the GOP who are running find that all of them combined have the same poll numbers as our Republican president. I don’t know if that is really the reason. Perhaps Gingrich just thinks it is cute. It isn’t.

This morning on “Meet the Press,” I could only take about five minutes of Gingrich’s bloviating on immigration and the war on terror. The show’s host, Tim Russert, asked Gingrich if he was running for president in 2008 and was finally able to get an answer that the former speaker was a)thinking about it and 2)would announce a decision in October. Boy, I can hardly wait.

How do I dislike thee, Honorable Pupek (Pupek is Slovenian for Newt, according to Dictionary.com)? Let me count the ways. Actually, I don’t have the time to sit here all day and list reasons why I believe Gingrich shouldn’t run for president or become president or run for any office again.

At least Gingrich isn’t afraid of sounding like a fascist when he talks about restricting the nation’s civil liberties for the greater good of fighting terrorism or whatever.

Today on Russert’s show he said one of the ways to fight illegal immigration is by instituting biometric identity cards. I didn’t quite understand for whom these cards should be required whether those from a foreign country who are in the U.S. or for the naturalized citizens as well. I would be tempted to say that he meant immigrants should be scanned and their info be put on cards to keep track of them. He said this as far back as 2001 while emphasizing the same should not be used for American citizens:

“I would not institute a national ID card because you do get into civil liberties issues.”

As if that would stop Speaker Salamander from having his fellow citizens tracked like sex offenders on parole.

Gingrich has already expressed a willingness to dispose of our First Amendment rights in the name of fighting terrorism.

“Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.”

Like his ideological brothers and sisters such as Bill O’Reilly, Gingrich also sees us fighting a holy war at home among ourselves due to the danger of so-called “radical secularism.”

“In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms.”

As if we didn’t have enough problems to tackle such as real wars and various societal problems.

The next president of the U.S. will certainly find his or her hands full with whatever was left out back of the White House by Gee Dubya and his gang. I would hope that the majority of voters in the country would have enough sense to not elect a demagogue like Newt. But then again, look who voters gave a second term to lead the nation. That bunch alone has torn to pieces what is known as our “Bill of Rights.”

If you care in the least about civil liberties, you have to worry just a little.

Seven come eleven
Daddy needs a new
pair of shoes.

Lately I have been on a biography kick. My reading habits are thus that I get interested in one topic or genre and keep seeking it out until I find something else to entertain and/or inform me.

Biographies, good biographies that is, can transform you back to that time or place even when put into the context and language of the present. A good example is “Mark Twain: A Life,” written by Ron Powers, who penned “Flags of our Fathers.”

Not only did Powers take me back on the amazing journey that was Mark Twain’s life — warts, ups, downs and all — but that author did so quite often using a 21st-century voice.

Interestingly enough, although I have always admired Twain’s writing and to some extent, the way he tackled life, I was pulled into the world of Sam Clemens once again because of an earlier biography I read about President Ulysses S. Grant. That book told of how Clemens, who initially was sympathetic with the South and then went West to avoid the whole war altogether, later encouraged and enabled Grant to write his own biography. Grant did so, in a race against the clock with terminal cancer and dying penniless on his tail.

Now I am reading a Warren G. Harding biography: “The Shadow of Blooming Grove,” a work published in 1968 by Russell Francis.

The first question I can imagine someone asking after reading the above paragraph is: why? Before George “Gee Dubya” W. Bush, Harding had long been thought of as possibly the worst president ever. Even dying in office didn’t improve his standing in history. Much of that was due to the Teapot Dome and other scandals that riddled the Harding administration. This is even though Russell, who pulls no punches about the good and bad of this Buckeye State native, felt Harding himself to be an extremely honest guy. Of course, I am skeptical because Harding made his bones before becoming a politician as a newspaper publisher and secondly because he was a politician.

Although I am early into Harding’s life, the most interesting aspect I have been reading so far is of the whispers and speculations floating about Warren G. Harding and his family that the family’s blood was partly that of the “Negro” race.

It wouldn’t be too much of a strech to say some politicians today might wish (for gaining the so-called “black” vote) their ancestry included that of African descent, as it wasn’t desirable for white people in the post Civil War era to be identified as of another race, especially being black. As most who know a smidgen of history will understand as well, such sentiments were as prevalent in the America’s “Heartland” of Ohio as they were in Georgia or Mississippi.

What is amazing is that the Hardings would be pummelled in print by rival publishers who accused them of being black. Warren Harding’s father, a physician, especially would get offended by such accusations and result to violence involving fisticuffs and knives.

Perhaps these speculations, whether real or imagined, are something I had previously learned at some point in college. But I don’t think so. At least I don’t remember ever reading that people suspected Harding of being our first black president. An any case, it is good to know such information exists because one doesn’t learn everything in school. So I can go with a good conscience saying that my reading habits — at least in this instance — are worthwhile. Sometimes those habits are not always of such value.

Some of the most encouraging words coming out of Congress lately are those from GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who is predicting my favorite (emphasis on the sarcasm) U.S. Attorney General will resign. Yes, that would be the Weasel of the West himself, Alberto “VO 5” Gonzales.

Under congressional fire for a scandal involving the firings of some U.S. attorneys for what were allegedly political reasons, Gonzales is now up to his sleazy neck in the warrantless eavesdropping controversy.

The latest twist in the sorry eavesdropping saga are revelations from former deputy attorney general James Comey who said that then-White House counsel Gonzales tried to pressure his predecessor, John Ashcroft, into recertifying the wiretapping program. Ashcroft was in intensive care at a hospital for gallbladder surgery and Comey was in fact the acting attorney general. Ashcroft reportedly deferred to his deputy who had reservations about signing onto the program.

Although Ashcroft was sick and probably under the influence of some heavy drugs, I have to say that was one good moment he had in an otherwise crappy tenure as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

An involvement in a can of freedom-limiting worms should not be surprising since Gonzales was involved in other matters which may have chipped away at civil liberties and human rights. Who can forget the oldies but goodies such as the “Torture Memo” or his championing of the Patriot Act and pooh-poohing the rights of Americans to habeas corpus?

These are among the reasons I call Gonzales a weasel, that and the fact his appearances before Congress with his cleverly, smirking non-answers could make the most patient among us want to hurl their televisions into the street, or perhaps, just hurl.

To paraphrase the Dixie Chicks Natalie Maines: “Just so you know…I’m ashamed the attorney general of the United States is from Texas.” I think many of you might guess how I feel about Gee Dubya.

My hope is that the door won’t hit Gonzales in the ass on his way out of office. On second thought, I hope it does hit him in the ass. He deserves it.

Surely someone knows the story behind this sculpture on the Jasper, Texas, courthouse square. Unfortunately, I don’t.

An odd and end or two need to be discussed from a visit to my hometown as well as to my birthplace a couple of weeks ago.

While visiting my birthplace, what once was the Hancock Hospital in Jasper, Texas, I came across what has become for me, a rather intriguing bronze sculpture. The bronze of this man reading a newspaper while perched on a bench is on the grounds of the Jasper County Courthouse. It is located katy-cornered from the now famous yet now defunct hospital. I say now famous because I was born there. Okay, so it’s a joke. I say it is defunct because as a hospital, it no longer exists. I’m not sure what the building is used for these days. But that is beside the point.

Surely, I figured, I would find something on the Internets about this bronze. And probably something is written about it. It’s just that I can’t find it because a) I didn’t look hard enough b) Nothing written about it exists. c)The statue is a figment of my imagination. So, if you out there in the blogoscosmos see a picture of the statue, you too could be seeing an illusion. But I think not.

After seeing the bronze figure and failing to find any information about it, I e-mailed the Jasper Chamber of Commerce. That was, what, two weeks ago? They never returned my e-mail if they had received it in the first place. After all, the e-mail may not have ever existed.

One would think a small-town chamber of commerce would want to answer e-mail queries about matters in their fair city. That is, provided of course that they exist. By they, I mean the matters and, I suppose, the chamber of commerce.

A reason why the chamber should answer is that they could highlight one of their highlights or illuminate one of their illuminations or just flip a switch and be done with it. Also, an answer regarding the matter would help prevent people from just making s**t up about the object in question. For instance, that the sculpture is of a notorious serial killer or even something less odious but nonetheless patently and ridiculously false. If someone writes me about the bronze or if I find something out, I might follow up right here on this little ol’ blog. But don’t hold your breath.

On to something else.

While visiting my hometown of Newton — some 15 miles to the east of Jasper — I visited one of my old high school friends. I had not seen Frank in almost 30 years. I don’t know why, it’s just one of those things. But he told me something interesting in explaining what he is doing these days, which is driving a truck around there rather than plying his former trade as an over-the-road, long-haul trucker.

Frank said he had a wreck somewhere out west while driving his truck. He had screwed up his knee after it was pinned under the wreckage. He said that what happened was he ate a pretzel and the next thing he knew, he was trapped in his truck. In other words, he blacked out after eating a pretzel. I thought, “Damn, the only other person I have ever heard of that happening to was Gee Dubya”, the story being extracted only after the prez was queried by reporters who noticed what turned out to be a nasty rug burn on his face.

After an extensive Internets search, one page of Yahoo results (that’s about all I have the patience for at the moment), I did not uncover any statistics on the numbers of people who pass out after eating pretzels. But apparently, enough people have choked so that parents are warned in this article to beware of feeding their kids pretzels. Personally, I thought such warnings would be due to shape but apparently, it’s the texture that is potentially breath-taking:

Dry, hard food may be hard to chew yet easy to swallow whole.
Hard pretzels
Tortilla chips
Popcorn

Apparently, we can now add pretzel eating to the list of occupational hazards for both being U.S. President AND truck driving. Who knew?