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The recent coronation of Charles III got me thinking about tradition. Charles became king because, somewhere in the distant past, one of his relatives climbed to the top of the greasy pole. Now, because of his family’s good fortune, he gets to become king. It has nothing to do with his talent or ability to do the job. Tradition made him king because members of his family have set on the throne and he is the oldest in his family. Tradition, for some reason, must be honored.

Even though tradition has very little bearing any longer on the monarch’s actual role in the modern UK. Traditionally, the king once held great power. It was so important that the coronation was a religious ceremony performed in a church. The king’s role came from God Almighty and not the people he ruled. This is no longer true. The King has very limited power. The government is installed through a democratic process in which the monarch can’t even participate. As for the religious aspect of the coronation, it is doubtful that in a country where over 50% of the population never attends church services that any British citizen actually believes that God has invested the new king with any power what so ever.

To summarize then, a church that has a very tenuous allegiance of UK population installs a king who has no real power in a modern democratic country because of tradition. Charles comes to church one day to have an archbishop plop a crown on his head and walks aways with billions of pounds and real estate and little else.

It connects the British people to their past. Really? Whose past? Certainly not the average UK citizen. The past for most citizens had little to do with the petty squabbles of the nobility. The history of the monarchs is all very fun and interesting but meaningless to the actual history of the British people. Indeed, the tradition that might be remembered with more relevance is the constant battles of the average citizen wresting power away from a resistant nobility.

But, tradition, it is important to keep up with the old traditions. Why? What would happen if the monarch disappeared over night? Would the lives of the average British person change much? Look I don’t actually care about Charles being King. If the British people want a king, let them have one. What bothers me is this slavish devotion to meaningless tradition. Why call a person a king when he really isn’t a King? Why say he is blessed by God when a great number of people don’t actually believe it anymore. Because of tradition?

Perhaps a better example of this is the continued celebration of Christmas and Easter for people who have long ago abandoned traditional Christianity. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas trees and presents and chocolate treats as much as the next person but the connection to Christianity has been severed. A lot of people, including myself, continue to celebrate these holidays because well it is traditional. Is that really a good reason to do something you no longer believe in?

When all you got is tradition, it is time to rethink what you are doing.

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Imagine being caught smuggling Fruit Roll Ups

Would you even go to prison for this? I assuming the smuggling is the issue but throwing the book at someone caught selling fruit roll ups for such a penny-ante crime seems a bit harsh. And if you did manage to send these smugglers to prison, what would the other prisoners think? Is there any cache to be a fruit roll up smuggler?

Why are fruit roll ups so expensive in Israel? This a pretty bizarre shortage. I mean can’t some candy store just import more fruit roll ups if there is a shortage? And how many fruit roll ups can you bring into Israel before it is smuggling. I imagine a family of four going to Israel with a hundred fruit roll ups each for a 2-week trip. That doesn’t seem like a lot of fruit roll ups really but what would Israeli customs say?

Finally this seems to me to have the makings of a great television crime drama with rival gangs vying for control of the fruit roll up territories of Tel Aviv.

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Conservative columnist Heather MacDonald recently bemoaned the mentally ill people roaming the streets of our city. She describes the failure of civil institutions to protect regular people from these people. Texas Republican Governor Abbott thinks that better mental health care is the solution to mass casualty shootings plaguing his state. Mental Health is the solution to these twin social ills the country is facing.

Better Mental Health certainly would help. The problem is what exactly are the solutions these Mental Health critics offering to meet these problems. Where will these mentally ill people be housed? Who will pay for their housing and medical care? How will their legal rights be protected? How do we identify the mentally ill? What will be the standard for involuntary institutionalization? These all call for the expansion of government oversight and infrastructure. They also all cost money.

How does this happen given the Conservative and Republican distaste for government regulation and taxes? Would they support an increase in taxes to insure that the mentally ill had suitable housing and healthcare? Would they support the psychological testing of gun buyers to determine if they have violent psychological problems? If protecting citizens is the goal, how much money are they willing to spend to achieve this goal? How do they propose protecting citizens from the criminally insane without a massive expansion of mental health and judicial systems? Prisons are not mental health clinics, putting the criminally insane into prisons

It is all well and good to point the finger at the mental health crisis but what are the mental health solutions? There are a lot of unanswered questions. Until these critics provide proposals to address these questions, their criticism is just loud noise to distract from the emptiness of their vision. They have absolutely nothing to offer that will solve these problems.

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We are all sinners. This is one Christian teaching I have admired as it humbles, or it should humble, Christians when they are tempted to judge other people. Pope, Prince and Pauper — we are all sinners. It is the great equalizer. Christians would be wise to keep this teaching in mind instead of throwing their moral superiority around to influence public thinking. Unfortunately they rarely do. Instead they divide the world into two camps — Christians and everybody else. Moral people versus heathens. This type of American Christian enjoys pointing out everyone else sins and, because heathens continue to sin, these Christians are committed to making sinners lives as miserable as possible.

This divisive thinking among American Christians can be seen on a daily basis but a particularly vivid example of it occurred the other in the Florida Legislature. Republicans there passed a law saying that they don’t have to treat anyone if they disagree with them on moral grounds. The intention, as I understand it, is to enable doctors to refuse treatment of patients who they find morally dubious.

I am confused because aren’t these same Republicans and Christians complaining about cancel culture. They want to be able to be disagree on subjects like transgender treatment for children without fear of retribution from trans activists who would view this as transphobic. Since their stated goal is an open society where anyone can speak their mind freely without fear, its particularly annoying that whenever they get control of a legislature they try to cancel the groups that fails their morality tests. A morality test that is pretty much focused on people Christians view as sexually deviant. They aren’t complaining about treating robbers, rapists, adulterers and con men. Their focus is on doctors being forced to treat gay and trans people.

I didn’t know they were being forced to now. This is the first I heard of it. I would think if this is a widespread problem that the outrage machine at Fox News would have spread the news far and wide. Are any doctors in Florida complaining about being forced to take on Drag Queens and Trans patients? Don’t doctors have a pretty easy way of taking on patients they approve of without making much of a scene. If I call a doctor for an appointment and the receptionist catches my gay lisp, they can just say the doctor isn’t taking new patients and I wouldn’t be the least bit suspicious to hear that. It happens all the time. There is no need to get into a conversation about morality much less a law suit. As with many issues that the Republican Party take on, this isn’t a problem. It is a show tune song to please their constituents and not because there is a problem. Florida Republicans have made a mountain out of no hill. It does give the illusion of movement and that is all these legislators want.

Another big problem with this startling ill-considered law is it is so broadly written that non-Christians can use it too. This will be its undoing. What is to stop a Gay Doctor from saying I believe that Christian Republicans are evil and I refuse to take them on as patients. What happens if there is a mass casualty event and the police bring in the wounded gunman, can a doctor decline to treat him because he disapproves of murder? Would Emergency Rooms across Florida have to staff a cross section of faiths, sexual identities and political persuasions to accommodate all the different political and religious passions that inspire disapproval? Where exactly does this end?

What we have here is a solution to something that isn’t even a problem. Nothing will change. Doctors will carry on doing what doctors do without having any patients forced on them. Nobody will see the difference because nothing needed to change. There will be legal battles because, of course, this is what it is all about. Republicans want somebody to challenge this law so they can point how unreasonable their political opponents are because, of course, some Trans Activists will take the bait and bring suit.

It is a lot of fuss for nothing. Most doctors will treat any patient they have without question. If a person wants a gender reassignment, I am pretty certain that most Christian doctors aren’t experts in that particular field and will have to refer them to another doctor any way. Most gay people want a doctor they feel they can talk freely to and will choose someone who is sympathetic to them.

If there is a problem then I suggest these Christian doctors remember the teaching that we are all sinners. Every patient that a doctor treats has sinned and is going to continue sinning every day for the rest of their lives. They will sin because they are human. In the mean time, a body is a body. If you have the power to make someone feel better why not do it? What would Jesus do?

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Why are so many men willing to kill complete strangers? It makes no sense to me. I can understand wanting to kill someone I know. If someone I know has betrayed me and this has enraged me. I could see how it might get out of hand and I might kill the person. And I can also understand killing someone who harmed somebody I loved. This person wronged me by harming someone I love and, in a moment of insanity, I reacted violently. It’s not something I approve of but I can understand it happening. Emotions sometimes get the better of people.

Killing strangers, on the other hand, is incomprehensible to me. The murderer wants to kill somebody and anybody will do. Why would anyone kill strangers who have done nothing to hurt me?

So I was disturbed when I read that Jake Teixeira, the guardsman accused of leaking classified documents, wanted to kill a ton of people. Why does anyone want to kill a ton of strangers? It is baffling. Yet, there appears to be a number of people who fall into this madness. Guns are a problem but they are just part of a bigger problem. What makes a person pull the trigger on a room full of kindergartners? Why would anyone set up a gun in a hotel room to kill people attending a concert below? What satisfaction can come from that?

It is troubling because there is nothing that can explain it. There are so many easy answers — violent video games and movies, the absence of religion in people’s lives, a nihilistic mind where nothing matters to the killer, an absent father in a boy’s life and untreated mental illness are all on the list but none so definitively as to be the key. As often happens when there is no rational explanation, this leaves the supernatural. Evil is the only thing that can answer it for me which is more troubling than any other answer.

I don’t like this answer. It seems like a cop out. It is irrational. I can’t tell you why something happened, so evil is the answer. Evil is elusive and frightening because it is inexplicable. Does it just take a hold of a person? Fill the mind with hatred and blood lust? And then carnage? What is that like and, most worrisome, can it happen to me? If I can’t explain or understand evil then how can I avoid evil? I don’t even know what evil looks like until it happens and when it does it looks a lot like anyone else I met on the streets. I won’t know evil until it opens fire on me. Could I be possessed by this evil? Evil isn’t the answer but it is the only one I got until something better comes along. I just don’t believe it is the answer.

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So Elon Musk has lost between 180 billion and 200 billion dollars. That is a lot of money. I thought the assumption regarding billionaires is that they are good with money and will spend it wisely so that their money will trickle down to the rest of us. Musk bought Twitter and exploding rockets. The Twitter sale is particularly interesting because almost as soon as he bought it, he decided he didn’t want it and did everything he could to undermine the deal. Unfortunately for Musk, he screwed up and is now stuck with Twitter. Then there is the exploding rocket, another good investment although we are told by Musk supporters that an exploding rocket is actually a good investment because we learned something about what we can and can not do. Maybe but I think NASA has been sending rockets into space for some time without mishaps, so perhaps a little consultation with them NASA before the next experiment is in order.

Given all of these expensive mishaps with their money, you think that I would be used to feckless billionaires by now but Rupert Murdoch’s pay out to Dominion of 787.5 million is another shocking example. Dominion was rightly irritated with Fox News for suggesting their voting machines were fraudulent. Fox News had ample evidence that this was incorrect however management decided that their audience didn’t want to hear the truth and that if they were told the truth they would get so upset that they would stop watching Fox News, so they decided to continue spreading the false news or, as we used to call it back in the good old days, lying. Dominion, especially after proving that Fox News was spreading a lie and knowingly continued to spread the lie, filed suit.

After a brutal onslaught of evidence proved all this malfeasance, Fox decided to settle with Dominion for nearly a cool 800 million dollars. Money, I would say, that was ill spent but OK anybody can make mistakes even a man who was born into a newspaper family and worked in publishing since the 1950’s, I don’t know, I suppose he could be unfamiliar with the idea that you can’t knowingly lie in your publications. Definitely an easy mistake for such a seasoned professional. Completely understandable.

Except this isn’t a one time error, there are future law suits. Murdoch even recently paid off Prince William. The idea, as I understood penalties and pay offs, is that the guilty party pays stiff penalties in order to teach them a lesson. But Murdoch apparently has so much money that he doesn’t have to worry about shelling out all of this money and, so as an extra added bonus, he doesn’t have to learn a lesson either. To make matters worse, these settlements are tax deductible as a business expense so speculation is that after Murdoch takes these deductions, he will recoup some of the 787.5 million. Imagine that, the American tax payer is actually paying part of Murdoch’s settlement.

It irritates me that billionaires get off the hook this way. The conservative press is always quick to point out welfare fraud when some poor wretch buys cigarettes and alcohol instead of using his welfare money on broccoli and carrots. You see, they say, the poor can’t be trusted with more money but nobody raises much of a fuss when a billionaire gets caught rigging the system. Murdoch needs to stop lying. How will he ever learn his lesson if we keep letting get away with it. Personally, I would much rather give 787.5 million to the worst welfare frauds in the country, the most unworthy gin drinking, cigarette smoking, Cadillac driving bums than for Murdoch to go unpunished. At least the poor frauds will pump money into the economy by spreading the money around to local businesses instead of paying off princes, ex-wives and coverup legal settlements.

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Heather MacDonald worries that Black on Black crime is the real problem plaguing the Black community and not a racist cop problem. That Black on Black crime problem is rooted in the racist cop problem eludes her. She thinks it is simply a matter of the Black community behaving better and all will be taken care of. She offers nothing in the way of tangible ways to make this happen and, because she ignores the racists cop part of the problem, her idea is doomed to failure even if she could trouble herself to make a tangible recommendation to address Black on Black crime.

MacDonald sees the problem quite narrowly — Blacks are committing too many crimes against other Blacks. Blacks need to stop worrying about bad cops and do something about their criminal youth then there would be no problem at all. But crime has been with us since humans began living together. It isn’t going to stop. Say a stranger attacks me on the street. I will certainly be pissed off about it and want something done. Now, if that person is a cop, I am going to be pretty damn upset about it. I just don’t expect much from my neighbors. They are strangers and I they can be half crazy for all I know. I do, however, expect cops to be helpful. I don’t expect them to attack me. They are public servants paid, in part, with my taxes. The worst I, as a white person, expect from a cop is that the crime will remain unsolved and I will never hear from them again. Some Blacks fear a different reaction from the police and that is a problem. A problem that impacts all crime in a Black neighborhood.

This doesn’t mean Blacks like their neighbors committing crimes against them or that they don’t see this as a problem. They may, however, have different concerns about the police. They may worry that the police will somehow entangle them in a bigger problem, or that the cops might overreact to what happened and, instead of solving the problem, they may kill someone or send someone to the hospital. They might weigh their decision about whether to involve the cops. Is this going to be worth any trouble I get from the police. This is an impediment to crime control. It also makes the police peculiarly ineffective in handling crime in Black neighborhoods. How can police solve crimes when the people they are serving mistrust them so much that they are circumspect in their interactions with the police? MacDonald never addresses this.

But she does point out that Black criminals are more dangerous to Blacks than the police. I don’t think anybody would argue with that. Criminals are more dangerous than the police. The problem here is that the police aren’t supposed to be dangerous. Fear of the cops is not an issue for MacDonald. For MacDonald, the data should convince Blacks about that, why should any other effort be made when the numbers prove her point. But, even if you assume the numbers are right and MacDonald is correct about Black on Black crime, it doesn’t really matter. Perception is everything. If the Black community believes Racism is still a problem then it is still a problem and the police need to change that perception. The burden for change rests firmly with the cops. Present day cops are paying the price for the racist behavior of their predecessors. It’s not fair to them but it is up to the present day cops to change this perception.

I also would argue that MacDonald is wrong about police racism being inconsequential and all in the Black community’s mind. Here is a sample of police racism which might explain this fear: the Central Park rape trial of innocent blacks, the drug arrests of innocent Blacks in Tulia Texas, George Floyd who died in police custody over a bad check, Tamir Rice, a twelve year old boy with a toy gun, who was shot and killed seconds after the police arrived — a grand jury decided not to take case to trial, John Crawford III who was shot holding a BB gun in a Walmart — a grand jury decided not to prosecute, an all white jury finding a white policeman not guilty of shooting of an unarmed black man, a white Louisiana judge using the N word, an Illinois cop fired for his racist posts, six Georgia policeman caught using the N word, a Mississippi police chief caught bragging about killing a black person, and just recently an Oklahoma sheriff was caught on tape talking about lynching black people. Why would Black people think they could be treated fairly when their daily personal experiences tell them differently? Why would Black people work with the police to stop crime in their neighborhoods when they are suspicious that these efforts might be used against them or their kids?

Black on Black crime is a problem but it isn’t “the” problem. Blacks have plenty of reasons to mistrust the police. MacDonald telling them this no longer is a problem in 21st Century America isn’t going to change many minds because Black people have a history with hundreds of years of police racism. Those feelings don’t just disappear overnight. In order to fight crime, Black people need to have confidence in the police. A lot of them don’t. Until then, MacDonalds complaint about Black on Black crime is an impotent response to a difficult and complicated problem and therefore meaningless.

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For all the talk from the right about Tucker Carlson fighting the good fight and taking it to the awful liberals, three things have become abundantly clear. He is dumb. We know he is dumb because he used hateful and derogatory phrases to describe people while using his company’s internet. Anyone who has worked in a major company in the past 25 years knows this is stupid. The company, if he paid any attention to his HR training, owns the system and the correspondence therefore the company has the right to read your emails. Also, once you have sent an email, you have lost all control over who that person will forward that email to. So, in order to protect yourself, it is best to refrain from trash talking your colleagues. Carlson might have skipped the HR training on the proper handling of electronic information but he surely must have known of the dangers of email. Yet, he still blithely went ahead with his disparaging emails. How can you explain such negligence other than stupidity on a rather grand scale.

Tucker Carlson is also just over the top mean. He uses the C word to describe Sidney Powell. He hates Donald Trump. Both Trump and Powell are Carlson allies. He uses the C word again to describe another work colleague. Surprisingly Powell and Trump are supposed to be political allies of Carlson so these aren’t passionate responses where he got carried away attacking his political enemies. These are friends and colleagues. Yet he has nothing but disdain for them. That he is so mean to his supposed friends reveals a duplicitous nature. He supports Powell and Trump on the air but behind their back he disparages them. Since Powell and Trump were making outrageous claims it could have been helpful for a person on the right to say that they were wrong. First because that is the way he truly feels, he should tell his audience his true feelings and not hide behind the agenda he hopes to create. This way they have a better understanding of his thoughts and these people. It also calls into question what his true feelings are. He tries to come off as a fire breathing right wing Republican but, in private, he takes a more moderate position. Which leads to the question, what are his actual position since he gives different opinions during the day time from the ones he expresses on the air?

With all of this verifiable evidence about Tucker Carlson, it is some what amazing that he still has supporters on the right. He isn’t very bright, or nice, and he is obfuscating his actual positions on issues. But, yeah, it is good to have a true believer on board.

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I don’t want to bring any more controversy to the abortion debate but I have seen the term medication abortions numerous times in the past week. If I had only seen it once, I would have chalked it up to author error but repeated use of the same term leads me to believe that the accepted term for an abortion brought about by pills is medication abortions. Here are additional example of this phrase here and here. This seems grammatically incorrect. Why is it called medication abortions instead of medicated abortions?

Medicated is an adjective that explains the abortion process the author is talking about. Since abortion is the subject and not medication, medicated abortion is the appropriate expression for the process. Joining medication and abortion doesn’t change the meaning and the term grates on my ears. What is the point? I am baffled. Or am I missing something?

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When I am looking for new music, I have gotten into the habit of checking other people’s favorite lists. This is how I discovered Peggy Lee’s version of “Fever” . Since I saw it on several lists, I gave it a listen and was pleasantly surprised at how unique a song it was especially for the time in which Lee sang.

The song came out in the staid 1950’s and it is anything but staid. Lee is clearly singing about sex and not love. She uses the word fever for sex but any adult would know what she is actually talking about and it isn’t love. Her yearning for sex is blatant. She doesn’t hide her desire with sweet talk or some notion of a higher love. She wants to get laid and she is unafraid to say it.

She also takes an inventive approach to the accompanying music. There is only a bass player and a drummer. It is sparse group with the more modest instruments of the band during a time where most songs had a full orchestra. The smaller group gives a quieter tone to the song so that when Lee adds her snapping fingers to the mix, you feel very much like your in Lee’s head as she is pondering the fun she is going to have with her man.

It is lovely way go.