Trump Cards, Con't

While the focus this week in politics is on the RNC convention in Cleveland, it's important to note just how many people the Republican presumptive nominee has alienated through his racist, hateful rhetoric so far, the the point where it may not be possible for Trump to win.  Trump is at best in the single digits among black voters, but he's also doing nearly as badly among Latino voters.

Donald Trump remains overwhelmingly unpopular with Latinos, a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll shows, with only about one in seven Latino voters say they support the presumptive GOP nominee.

A whopping 76 percent of the 300 Latino registered voters in the poll said they back Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head race, while just 14 percent said they back Trump.

What's more, 82 percent of Latino voters say they have an unfavorable view of Trump, while just 11 percent view him positively.

Yeah, Trump is in the teens with Latino voters.  That sound you hear is the RNC having a heart attack because they know they've just lost North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Colorado and Virginia for sure if those numbers remain true.  Support that low from Latino voters could put other states in play too like Arizona, and could even have some effect in Texas if Trump keeps this up.

Latinos, a fast-growing bloc of voters nationwide, have supported Democrats by significant margins in recent elections. But Trump's low level of support with the group is unprecedented.

Mitt Romney won 27 percent of Latinos in 2012; John McCain - a champion of immigration reform - garnered 31 percent support; and George W. Bush won around 40 percent in his re-election effort in 2004.

Combining this with Clinton winning the college-educated white vote, something the Democrats haven't done since Eisenhower and a group that Romney won by 14 points in 2012, and the coming wipeout of Trump is going to be legendary.

If the voters show up, that is.

The First Month's Agenda

As Hillary Clinton will speak at today's final day of the NAACP national conference here in Cincinnati, a preview of what she has to say came from a video appearance at the Netroots Nation 2016 conference on Saturday in St. Louis, where she laid out her plan for the first 30 days at the White House:

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, made the announcement in a video for the annual Netroots Nation progressive conference.

"Today I’m announcing that in my first 30 days as president, I will propose a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and give the American people — all of us — the chance to reclaim our democracy," she said.

"I will also appoint Supreme Court justices who understand that this decision was a disaster for our democracy. And I will fight for other progressive reforms, including small-dollar matching and disclosure requirements."

In a statement, Clinton also pledged to "promote SEC rulemaking requiring publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending to their shareholders" and to sign an "executive order requiring federal government contractors to fully disclose all political spending."

Campaign finance reform is all well and good, but this is what got my attention.

Clinton also called for criminal justice reform, laying out two additional proposals for turning "talk into action," especially in the wake of recent deaths of black men shot by police.

"First, as president I’ll bring law enforcement and communities together to develop national guidelines on the use of force," Clinton said. "Second, I will target $1 billion in my first budget to take on implicit bias, which remains a problem across our society and even in the best of our police departments."

It's a start, and only a start, but getting that start is necessary.  I'm hoping there's a lot more to Clinton's CJ reform proposals, and the voter registration proposals she is expected to talk about in Cincinnati today, but again, any changes to the Voting Rights Act or to criminal justice and mandatory minimum sentencing depends on the makeup of Congress next January.

If the GOP still controls the House, all bets are off.

StupidiNews!

• French police have arrested an Albanian couple in connection with last week's truck attack that killed 84, meanwhile US officials have confirmed a third American was killed in Nice.
• Venezuelans are once again flooding into neighboring Colombia to buy food and other essentials as border crossings re-opened this weekend amid Venezuela's ongoing shortages.
• Chinese labor groups collaborated with a US worker's rights organization before striking against Wal-Mart in China, Reuters has learned.
• The European Union is looking to possibly force new British PM Theresa May's hand over Brexit by suspending Britain's EU voting rights in the European Parliament. 
• Starbucks is following the lead of McDonald's and other retailers that provide public Wi-Fi at stores by blocking porn websites that family consumer groups see as a public health crisis.

Last Call For Copping Out In Cleveland

Seems like Cleveland's Finest are a bit worried about the Republican National Convention and Ohio's open carry firearms laws, and want the city to do something about it ASAP.

The head of Cleveland's largest police union is calling on Ohio Gov. John Kasich to temporarily restrict the state's open carry gun laws during this week's Republican National Convention following Sunday's shooting in Louisiana that killed three officers and wounded at least three others. 

"We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something -- I don't care if it's constitutional or not at this point," Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, told CNN. "They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over." 

State law in Ohio allows for licensed firearm owners to wear their weapons in public. With the exception of a small "secure zone" inside and around the Quicken Loans Arena, residents, delegates and protesters are legally permitted to walk around the city -- including within its 1.7 square mile regulated "event zone" -- with any firearm not explicitly banned by the state. 

Kasich, responding to the request, said: "Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested." 

"The bonds between our communities and police must be reset and rebuilt -- as we're doing in Ohio -- so our communities and officers can both be safe. Everyone has an important role to play in that renewal," he said. 

Earlier, he released a video offering his condolences in the wake of the Baton Rouge attack.

So no, cops, the Republican party doesn't exactly have your back when it comes to you -- and public safety -- versus the NRA.  Maybe you want to keep that in mind the next time you decide the GOP is the "law and order" party, huh?

Guns will alway be more important that cops to the GOP.  Always remember that.

Republicans Hanging Around

Meanwhile, as the GOP prepares to get a good exchange rate by trading in Obama Derangement Syndrome back in for Clinton Derangement Syndrome...

A member of the West Virginia House of Delegates is causing a stir after tweeting that Hillary Clinton should be "hung on the Mall in Washington, DC."

CBS affiliate WOWK-TV reports that Michael Folk, a Republican legislator who is also a United Airlines pilot, posted a tweet Friday night saying: "Hillary Clinton, you should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution... then hung on the Mall in Washington, DC."

Folk told the station that he posted the tweet over the FBI's decision not to charge Clinton over the investigation into her private email server.

The tweet, which has since been deleted, drew a swift rebuke from his employer, United Airlines.

"We are appalled by comments advocating harm to any person," said airline spokesperson Mary Clark. "They do not represent United Airlines and we are looking into the matter further."

So we've got a sitting Republican state lawmaker openly calling for the execution of the Democratic candidate for president, but let's start screaming about how there's no difference between the two parties again and how "Republicans are batshit crazy" is just not a good enough reason for you to vote for Democrats in 2016.

Because you need something more to stop the GOP.

OK, sure.

Police Killed In Baton Rouge

Seven police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were ambushed by gunmen Sunday morning, and at least two of the officers are dead.

Multiple police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were shot on Sunday morning, a department spokesman said, as the country remains on edge about police and community relations.

Two of the officers have died, Baton Rouge's chief administrative officer told the Advocate Newspaper.

The officers were taken to a local hospital, spokesman Sergeant Don Coppola said the local CBS affiliate, adding he did not know the extent of their injuries. Sheriff's deputies may have also been involved.

While the scene of the shooting was contained, police have still not taken the shooter into custody and warned local residents to stay away from the scene, near Airline Highway.

The reports come a week after a wave of protests against police violence in Baton Rouge and other cities after a 37-year-old father of five was shot and killed at close quarters by law enforcement officers. At one of the demonstrations in Dallas, a gunman opened fire on white officers assigned to the protest, killing five of them.

Telephone video footage carried on a local news station showed police cars arriving at a suburban intersection, and then five shots rang out.

Baton Rouge was of course the place two weeks ago where Alton Sterling was killed by two police officers, the shooting captured on video.  Nothing justified Sterling's death, just as nothing justified the deaths of these Baton Rouge officers today.

Things were pretty scary before in 2016, now they're just getting worse during this long, hot summer.

Sunday Long Read: Mistake By The Lake

As the Republican National Convention gets underway shortly in Cleveland, Kyle Swenson explores the city's history of always looking for a fight and being at most two to three steps away from finding it.

Cleveland has always been quick to throw a punch. That’s not a homer tough guy boast. If I can lift a line from Jack Nicholson’s gangster boss in The Departed, I slander my own environment, and it makes me sad. But flare-ups of violence are status quo here, both if you dive into the historical record or consult your own eyeballed primary source memories of being ringside for bar brawls. That bruiser history is symptomatic of a civic arena marked historically by fractious competition and tension between groups, racial injustice, bad vibes pinballing all over the place. That track record will also tell you a lot more about the upcoming Republican National Convention than a busload of national pundits—particularly in the jacked-up political landscape that has draped the country in 2016.

Much of the prognostications about the upcoming RNC have been dooming and glooming over the possibility of chaos in Cleveland when Donald Trump accepts the GOP Presidential nomination. But those guesses assume the candidate himself is the wild card, the agent of possible chaos. In reality, the stage, not the players, is the x-factor here.

This is not to say my hometown isn’t full of lovely people. It is. But historically, Cleveland has been hot-wired with the kind of bad socioeconomic juju that not only has combusted regularly into violent public episodes, but also has fed local flirtations with homegrown fascism. Look at this history, you see there’s violence sitting close to the heart of depressed and distressed American metros like Cleveland. Look closer, you see that this energy is swelling behind Trump’s candidacy like wind filling a sail. Look closer still, get eye-to-eye with that history, and you’ll understand that despite his rise, Donald Trump has zero clue about the forces he’s set loose.

And those forces will indeed be loose in Cleveland this week. The problem is of course they've been swirling around this country for centuries now, and when they do explode, people get hurt or a lot, lot worse.

I really do think it's going to get bad in Cleveland.  We just don't know how bad.  But as I keep saying, should Hillary Clinton win in November, the people behind the rise of Donald Trump aren't going to magically vanish.

They've been here for a very, very long time.

Last Call For Gotta Deport 'Em All!

What is with Republican lawmakers and their nearly sociopathic need to purify America of people they don't approve of by deporting everyone they can find?

One day after the horrific terror attack on civilians in Nice, France, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) took to Twitter to call on President Obama to “immediately deport” immigrants on terror watch lists.

In a series of tweets, Duncan proposed that the president “halt the Syrian refugee resettlement program” and “immediately deport any non-citizens listed on a terror-watch list.” He later added that immigrants would be given a deportation hearing, “thus protecting due process.”

Duncan also suggested that the United States should be “careful” with “who we’re granting citizenship to and which countries we allow immigration from,” calling for a closer scrutiny of the visa waiver program with the European Union, which allows visa-free travel between United States and European Union residents.

It's not surprising, Republican have been like this for years (and more than a few Democrats, sadly, which is why we still have the Patriot Act as law.)  But at some point the rest of us have to decide whether or not we want to start going down the road of rounding up people for the crime of "Not having committed any crimes yet but..." and all that entails.

Here's a hint: that's actual, literal "textbook definition of fascism" stuff, folks.

The party of fear anyone who is not Christian (and it used to be "and not Jewish but Trump's more "energetic" supporters have put that to bed), not WASPy is getting pretty powerful these days. America has always struggled with racism, it has for 240 years and will most likely continue to struggle for another 240 years more.

Trump's Pence-sive Decision, Con't

Donald Trump made it official today, introducing Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate. The problem is the act of choosing Pence itself, and the hysterically sad cavalcade of failure leading up to Pence's selection, hasn't quieted Trump's critics who say he'll get stomped in November and all but end the GOP while doing it.

Donald Trump’s selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a strait-laced and seasoned conservative, as his running mate Friday was designed to be a soothing overture that could repair the fractured Republican Party and signal a newfound discipline in the celebrity billionaire’s bid for the White House.

But Trump’s apparent 11th-hour indecision and private hesi­ta­tion about Pence, coupled with a delayed and fitful introduction, threatened to undercut part of the rationale for Pence joining the ticket: steadying a turbulent general-election campaign.

Trump announced Friday on Twitter that he had chosen Pence and that they would make their first joint appearance at a news conference Saturday in New York. The social-media proclamation capped a period of extraordinary uncertainty and mixed signals about the selection, just days before the Republican National Convention is set to open here in Cleveland.

“I’m very excited, very humbled and very grateful,” Pence told reporters gathered outside his Manhattan hotel as he made his way to Trump Tower for a 90-minute meeting with the candidate and campaign advisers.

In Pence, Trump has a classically credentialed if generic campaign partner. Trump, 70, will rely on the 57-year-old Midwesterner to shore up support where Pence has nurtured deep relationships, such as on the Christian right and with the conservative movement’s moneyed establishment. A former chairman of the House Republican Conference, the ideological purist was embraced by many corners of the Republican coalition Friday that had been cool to Trump’s candidacy.

But there were also immediate signs that Pence could shift the focus of the overall debate in ways Trump may not intend. Pence brings a visceral ideological edge to what has been a populist campaign centered on economic grievances and strident nationalism.

While Trump mostly avoids social issues on the campaign trail and his positions have evolved over the years, Pence has a history of vocally promoting a hard-line conservative agenda — from opposing same-sex marriage and abortion rights to defunding Planned Parenthood.

On a related note, "overt racism" is now known as "economic grievances and strident nationalism".  Thanks Robert Costa!

Seriously though, if you thought Donald Trump was doing badly with women before, well, let's talk about Mike Pence's record, shall we?

Take, for example, an ongoing outbreak of HIV in southern Indiana. From December 2014 to May of this year, 191 cases of HIV, nearly all linked to the injection of the painkiller Opana, were found in Scott County, a rural area near the Kentucky border. Before the outbreak, there had been numerous deaths and known risks from the increase in injection drug use in the area for several years. Pence had long been a vocal opponent of needle exchange programs, which allow drug users to trade in used syringes for sterile ones in order to stop the spread of diseases, despite evidence that they work. Such programs were banned in the state when the outbreak started.

At the end of March last year, four months after the outbreak began, Pence declared a public health emergency, allowing needle exchanges to be opened in Scott County. Scott County Health Officer Dr. R. Kevin Rogers described the program as having “a tremendously positive and dramatic impact” and recently made a successful request to have the program extended until May 2017. At least four other counties have been allowed to start programs as well. Still, Pence hasn’t moved to lift the state ban on funding for needle exchanges and has made it clear in the past that he would veto any bill that tried to lift the ban statewide.

Pence has also shown a deep misunderstanding of basic public health principles in the past. In 2001, he wrote an op-ed declaring that “smoking doesn’t kill.” The evidence? “Two out of three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness.” Diseases are rarely the product of one thing. With lung cancer, for example, there’s a strong genetic component. Some people who don’t smoke will get lung cancer.1 Many people who do smoke will not. Relative risk, which measures the strength of the relationship between an exposure and a health outcome (smoking and lung cancer in this instance), is a funny thing; it can’t be used to measure the risk for an individual, only a group. And at that macro level, the risk of smoking is quite clear, as this oft-cited American Cancer Society chart shows.

Lung cancer isn’t even the most common negative health outcome from smoking. That distinction goes to vascular diseases that cause heart disease and/or stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Pence’s home state of Indiana should be particularly concerned about tobacco: 23 percent of adults are smokers, the sixth-highest statewide rate in the United States. Fifteen percent of pregnant women smoke, nearly double the national average, and the state spent $2.93 billion in 2014 on health costs caused by cigarette smoking — more per capita than 31 other states, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Still, Indiana has a cigarette tax of just 99 cents,2 lower than 35 other states, despite a wealth of evidence showing that increasing taxes on tobacco reduces smoking rates.

And of course, there's the state's insane abortion law that Pence signed in March.

Indiana already tightly regulates abortion. Now, HB 1337 puts forth a laundry list of additional restrictions that lawmakers haven’t previously been able to get passed.

The legislation includes several provisions that fit into a larger strategy to shame women for the reasons they may decide to end a pregnancy. Women will be prohibited from choosing an abortion based on their fetuses’ gender, a policy that’s based on racist assumptions about Asian American women’s attitudes toward daughters. Women will also be barred from choosing an abortion if their fetus has genetic abnormalities like Down Syndrome, a rare restriction — only North Dakota has successfully enacted it so far — that seeks to drive a wedge between the abortion rights community and the disability rights community.

Doctors will be held liable if the state determines they performed an abortion on a patient who had one of those motivations in mind. It’s unclear exactly how this policy will be enforced in practice. But leading medical groups warn that it could compromise the doctor-patient relationship by chilling open conversation about pregnancy decisions.

There's more. HB 1337 also imposes strict regulations on abortion doctors, requiring them to obtain "admitting privileges" at local hospitals, that are designed to drive them out of business. It requires the remains of miscarried or aborted fetuses to be buried or cremated. And it restricts the donation of fetal tissue, a crucial tool in medical research that's come under fire thanks to asmear campaign against Planned Parenthood that construes the practice as "selling baby parts."

Parts of that law are now on hold due to the recent Supreme Court decision on Texas's TRAP laws, but the point is Mike Pence wants to have the government force women to cremate or bury their aborted fetal tissue as punishment.

And he's now Donald Trump's veep pick.

The most virulently misogynist ticket in American history?  Absolutely.  These two absolutely personify the Republican War on Women.

Istanbul, Not Constanti-No-Coup

At this point the coup attempt in Turkey by parts of the military to unseat President Erdogan has failed utterly, and now the cleaners are coming.

Some 2,839 soldiers, including high-ranking officers, have been arrested over an attempted coup that is now over, says Turkey's PM Binali Yildirim.

In a night he called a "black stain on Turkish democracy", he said 161 people had been killed and 1,440 wounded.

Explosions and gunfire were heard in Ankara, Istanbul and elsewhere overnight and thousands of Turks heeded President Erdogan's call to rise up against the coup-plotters.

It is unclear who was behind the coup.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed a "parallel structure", in a clear reference to Fethullah Gulen, a powerful but reclusive US-based Muslim cleric whom he accuses of fomenting unrest.

However, in a statement, Mr Gulen rejected any suggestion he had links to the events, saying he condemned "in the strongest terms, the attempted military coup in Turkey".

All this happened as US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Moscow meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the future of Syria, Turkey's neighbor (which Erdogan has been supporting for years militarily).

The CIA playbook on a military coup is pretty standard worldwide: make sure your guys get all the necessary A's.

• Armed forces
• Airwaves
• Airports
• Allies
• and the Asshole in charge you're trying to overthrow.

By my count, the junta had precisely none of those in hand when they pulled the trigger.  Erdogan was on vacation in the resort city of Marmaris, 400 miles away from Ankara or Istanbul.  His forces took the airports, defended State TV, and protected his allies in parliament.  It was a botched job from the word go, so comically inept that I'd almost believe Kerry and Lavrov decided to help Erdogan clean out his pool filter of idiots in exchange for staying out of Syria in the future. Almost. (Can't rule out stupid people being stupid.)

Shorter version: If you come at the king, best not miss.




They missed.

It's going to get nasty in Turkey.

May Or May Not In The UK

Welcome to the Theresa May era in British politics, where the new Tory government's first order of bsuiness is to rid the nation of that pesky department dealing with climate change.

The government has axed the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) in a major departmental shake-up. 

The brief will be folded into an expanded Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy under Greg Clark. 

Ed Miliband, the former energy and climate secretary under Labour, called the move "plain stupid". 

It comes at a time when campaigners are urging the government to ratify the Paris climate change deal. 

In his statement, Mr Clark appeared keen to calm concerns about the priority given to tackling global warming. 

He said: "I am thrilled to have been appointed to lead this new department charged with delivering a comprehensive industrial strategy, leading Government's relationship with business, furthering our world-class science base, delivering affordable, clean energy and tackling climate change."

Everything's fine, nothing to see here, please go about your business as May's Tories continue to take the country down the primrose path.  Expect more of this as the days, weeks, and months wear on and Brexit-era London decides more and more to pull out of international accords and apologize profusely, but it just can't be done, you see.  British wingnuts may be more polite, but they're just as awful.

New tag: Theresa May.

Last Call For Parks And Wreck Creation

So, you remember America's bountiful national park system?  That whole amazing series of parks and monuments ranging from the Great Smoky Mountains to Yellowstone to Denali to the Grand Canyon, where tens of millions of us visit each year and enjoy our beautiful country while working to preserve nature for generations to come? Yeah, well, apparently we're going to just chuck that out the window and go frack it all if the GOP gets their way.

The Republican platform committee met this week to draft the document that defines the party’s official principles and policies. Along with provisions on pornography and LGBT “conversion therapy” is an amendment calling for the indiscriminate and immediate disposal of national public lands. 

The inclusion of this provision in the Republican Party’s platform reflects the growing influence of and ideological alliance between several anti-park members of the GOP and anti-government extremists, led by Cliven Bundy, who dispute the federal government’s authority over national public lands. 

“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states,” reads the adopted language. “We call upon all national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the transfer of those lands identified.” 

The provision calls for an immediate full-scale disposal of “certain” public lands, without defining which lands it would apply to, leaving national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and national forests apparently up for grabs and vulnerable to development, privatization, or transfer to state ownership.

If this sounds delightfully stupid, that's because it is. Apparently there's an entire GOP caucus dedicated to ending America's national park system, because we have to ruthlessly exploit all the land we have to create jobs opportunities communities money for rich people.

Republicans are now officially the party of getting rid of America's parks.

They hate the environment that much.

Trump Cards, Con't

With all the screaming this week about police reform, terror trucks, and Pokemon, we've overlooked the issue with the upcoming Republican convention in Cleveland: Donald Trump is effecively broke and is begging for money just to keep the lights on.

Millions of dollars short and running out of time, organizers of the Republican National Convention have written an urgent request for $6 million to Las Vegas billionaire couple Sheldon and Miriam Adelson to cover the bills for next week’s festivities. 

In a letter to the Adelsons, obtained by POLITICO, the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee revealed the names of more than two dozen prominent corporations and individuals who have reneged on a collective $8.1 million in pledged donations.

The letter represents the most public acknowledgment to date that Donald Trump has directly cost convention organizers millions of fundraising dollars. 

“Over the past couple months, negative publicity around our potential nominee resulted in a considerable number of pledges backing out from their commitments,” the letter says. 

It goes on to list the companies and wealthy individuals who have withdrawn their financial commitments. Among those who have canceled their donations, according to the letter, are David Koch ($1 million), FedEx ($500,000), Visa ($100,000), Pepsi ($500,000) and Coca-Cola ($1 million).

None of these global brands want to be associated with the Party of Trump so directly right now, and who can blame them?  The thing is, if "billionaire" Trump truly has the money he says he does, then he should have no issue writing a check himself to cover the difference.

He's not doing that.  It's almost like his entire campaign is a hollow shell company bilking his "investors" while he cons his way to the top.

Suckers.

Newt Makes His Awful Case

With the news that Trump has selected Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Pence as his veep (although Trump said last night he hasn't made a "final, final decision" yet) Newt Gingrich made his play on FOX last night to secure the job by going after America's Muslim population as enemies of the state.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I don't want to really tie this into politics, but every issue America is now dealing with, every issue that we have discussed in recent months and years about the Islamization of Europe, about refugees, about immigration, about open borders -- it seems to come together, and also political correctness and not recognizing radical Islamic terrorism as the enemy and evil in our time. From your perspective, what does this tragedy, this evil attack tonight, mean for that conflict and debate?

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, first of all, Sean, as you know, I was in Paris just last weekend talking with people who are deeply involved in trying to deal with the Iranian government and other sources of terrorism. And let me also say Daniel Silva has a remarkable new novel called Black Widow, and the entire opening section is on the systematic Islamic attack on Jews in France, which is the worst it's been since the Nazis. So let me start with where I'm coming from, and let me be as blunt and as direct as I can be.

Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about defining who our enemies are. Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately.

Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet-based source. And frankly if we can't destroy them through the internet, we should destroy them with kinetic power, using various weapons starting with Predators, and frankly just killing them. I am sick and tired of being told that the wealthiest, most powerful civilization in history, all of Western civilization, is helpless in the face of a group of medieval barbarians who, for example, recently burned 20 young women to death -- burned them to death because they wouldn't have sex with them. A group which beheaded recently in the Philippines two Canadian businessmen.

And we're told to be reasonable, to be passive, to not judge. Well I just want to tell you tonight, everybody who watches this video, this is the fault of Western elites who lack the guts to do what is right, to do what is necessary, and to tell us the truth, and that starts with Barack Obama.

And in the 15 years since 9/11, this is the way we continue to treat Muslims in America: a potential vice-presidential pick openly calling for loyalty tests, mass deportations, and endless war up to and including genocide.

I know I've criticized Barack Obama's foreign policy, hell I did it just last night.  I've gone after Clinton's foreign policy as well.  But the Republican alternative is insanity. We cannot allow these monsters to rule our country with fear and hatred any longer. Our international allies must think we're lunatics, a standing danger to the entire planet with rhetoric like this.

We've got to start fixing this in November, and that means doing everything possible to get Republicans out of office.  That means President Hillary Clinton, and Democrats on down the ticket in 50 states. I endorse that without hesitation at this point.  I'm done wishing for a sane Republican party, I'm done trying to appeal to their supporters' humanity. They're adults, they can make their choices.

My choice is the Democratic party, period.

StupidiNews!

• An 18-wheeler smashed though Bastille Day crowds in Nice, France, leaving 84 dead, including 2 Americans, in what authorities are calling a terrorist attack.
• Donald Trump is expected to tap GOP Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, but the final decision will be postponed by Trump due to the Nice attack.
• New British PM Theresa May continues to assemble her cabinet, dismissing a number of ministers from posts and replacing them with proponents of Britain's exit from the EU.
• Cases involving voter rights in Texas and North Carolina are expected to be heard by a short-handed Supreme Court before the November election, risking more 4-4 deadlock outcomes.
• Former President Jimmy Carter says his decision to help fund NASA's space shuttle program was because of the program's peaceful exploration purposes.