Wondering, on Wednesday (v34)

If you watch the evening news, you've probably seen a few thousand pharmaceutical commercials, everything from painful sex to painful joints to painfully dry eyes to painfully not being able to perform to painful diabetic nerve pain to painful embarrassment due to losing your keys and finding them in the refrigerator. After a rude awakening, I was thinking I might need to "talk to my doctor" about a drug, the one for painful night leg cramps. Boy I had a doozy of one in my calf around 4 this morning. I'm wondering now what drug I need to take to help me remember the name of the drug I wonder if I need to talk to my doctor about taking...

C Neibergall/AP Photo

Speaking of drugs, I think the conservatives who are up in arms about the pictures of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Canada) with posters of guns in the background need to take a chill pill.

Yeah, it's true that the guns are pointing at his head, but is that his fault for standing where that could happen, or is it the fault of the photographer for taking pictures of Cruz?  And is Cruz upset, or are the gun-shy gun fans upset?  After all, it he was the one who, at an Iowa campaign stop just a couple of days after the murders in Charleston, joked about gun control:

You know the great thing about the state of Iowa is, I'm pretty sure you all define gun control the same way we do in Texas - hitting what you aim at.

It might just be me, but I think if you crack that joke on the heels of a mass murder in a church, you shouldn't be too concerned about a bunch of paper guns in frames on the wall.

Charleston's murderer, Dylann Roof, has a clear identity as a racist bastard, but a less clear identity as a person.  Seems the national press pronounce his last name Roof like 'rewf', but the folks down south have generally said it Roof like 'hoof'. Who was it who said "You can say anything about me you want to, as long as you get my name right?" Seems Mr. Rewf or Mr. Roof missed that bit in his research.

I didn't call Roof an 'alleged' murderer, or an 'accused' murderer, as many in the media continue doing.  Why? Because he confessed. I'm also not going to call him crazy or insane or nuts or any of the common mental health terms we use so freely in cases like this.  He planned it, he did it, he admitted it. At this point let's leave it up to his lawyers to try and figure out where the dust settles. I'm comfortable calling him what he called himself: a killer, a murderer, a racist.

Another person who I won't call nuts or crazy or insane is Pope Francis. I'm going to let Catholics handle the name calling, as it seems there are many who are upset with the Pontiff for his encyclical on climate change, the environment and man's disastrous treatment of our home. Francis has continued his messaging, tweeting frequently in the past several days along these lines:

The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.

Economic interests easily end up trumping the common good.

Many things have to change course, but it is we humans above all who need to change.

Among the folks who are irked with the Holy Father is Jeb Bush, who converted to Catholicism many years ago, and who is not afraid of using his faith in his messaging, or defending his faith publicly, as he did back in 2013 when he thought (or pretended he thought) that President Obama was closing the US embassy to the Vatican. On the Pope's encyclical, Bush had this to say:

I hope I'm not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope. I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.

Like abortion. Or marriage equality. Oh wait, those are not political issues, sorry. Those are just tax protected Sunday sermon topics. Ending poverty, finding equal justice, saving Mother Earth, those are political issues.  Silly me.

Finally, speaking of silly, am I the only one wondering if the people who went out and bought guns, all kinds of guns, when President Obama got elected, or here in NY before the SAFE Act went into effect, are the same ones who are now out there buying up anything and everything with the Confederate flag on it?

I just don't get it. I'm wondering, should I talk to my doctor about that?