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.

Last Call For Putin On The Blitz

Cold, hard realpolitik in the Obama era is giving me a headache, and no migraine is larger than Syria right now. I'm not surprised at all that the new plan to cooperate with Russia over Syria to fight ISIS is on terms that are apparently very, very good for the existing Assad regime and for our good friend Vlad. Josh Rogin at WaPo:

The Obama administration’s new proposal to Russia on Syria is more extensive than previously known. It would open the way for deep cooperation between U.S. and Russian military and intelligence agencies and coordinated air attacks by American and Russian planes on Syrian rebels deemed to be terrorists,according to the text of the proposal I obtained. 

Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to discuss the plan with top Russian officials in a visit to Moscow on Thursday. As I first reported last month, the administration is proposing joining with Russia in a ramped-up bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, which is also known as the Nusrah Front. What hasn’t been previously reported is that the United States is suggesting a new military command-and-control headquarters to coordinate the air campaign that would house U.S. and Russian military officers, intelligence officials and subject-matter experts. 

Overall, the proposal would dramatically shift the United States’ Syria policy by directing more American military power against Jabhat al-Nusra, which unlike the Islamic State is focused on fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While this would expand the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Syria, it would also be a boon for the Assad regime, which could see the forces it is fighting dramatically weakened. The plan also represents a big change in U.S.-Russia policy. It would give Russian President Vladi­mir Putin something he has long wanted: closer military relations with the United States and a thawing of his international isolation. That’s why the Pentagon was initially opposed to the plan. 

Yet for all this, it’s not at all clear that the plan will be accepted by Putin — or that Russia will fulfill its terms if he does. Administration officials caution that no final decisions have been made and that no formal agreement has been reached between the two countries. Negotiations over the text are ongoing ahead of Kerry’s arrival in Russia.

So what we'd really be doing is attacking the largest thorn in Assad's side and helping Russia with their favorite dictator in the Middle East, in exchange for...what, exactly?

In exchange for U.S. assistance against Jabhat al-Nusra, the Russian side would be required to limit airstrikes to targets both sides agreed on and also to ensure that the Syrian air force would stand down and not bomb targets in agreed-upon “designated areas.” 

The proposal provides some large exceptions for the constraints on the Russians and the Assad regime, however. The Russian air force would still be permitted to strike Jabhat al-Nusra unilaterally if there were an “imminent threat” to their personnel. The Syrian regime would be allowed to bomb Jabhat al-Nusra if the group tried to advance beyond “designated areas” in which they already operate. Also, if Jabhat al-Nusra attacked the regime, even from the “designated areas,” the Russians could come to the aid of the regime, according to the proposal. The details of the “designated areas” are not spelled out in the document. 

“All actions should be consistent with the terms of the cessation of hostilities,” the document states, referring the cease-fire. The State Department admits neither Russia nor the Assad regime are adhering to the cease-fire now.

In the second part of the proposal, called the “Approach for Practical Russian-American Cooperation against Daesh and Jabhat al Nusra and Strengthening the Cessation of Hostilities,” the administration spells out details about how it wants the United States and Russia to work together on the ground. 

Within five days of establishment of the JIG, the two sides are to come up with a common map of all Jabhat al-Nusra locations and begin sharing intelligence on leadership targets, training camps, logistical depots, supply lines and headquarters. They will then set about developing targets for strikes in the “designated areas.”

Right, so Assad would totally, seriously, super promise not to keep bombing the crap out of the smoking rubble of what's left in Syria, with six million people already displaced and hundreds of thousands more fleeing each month.   Except for you know the part where the exceptions to that promise allow him to do just that and gleefully continue to destroy one of the oldest civilizations on Earth because people made him feel bad about his dead father.

Sure, this seems like a great deal for the folks that are left in Syria, and something that totally isn't going to blow up and turn into an even worse problem in 2017 and beyond.

Good job, Obama foreign policy team.  I feel confident that this won't be a collosal garbage fire, because we can totally trust Assad and Putin completely.

I'm going to take some Aleve for this migraine, in the meantime.

Gotta Catch Em, Law!

I understand that legislation keeping up with technology is always a challenge in America, and lord knows Pokemon Go is causing me headaches at work as our company's mobility device administrator, but boy, this didn't take long, did it?

Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a Brooklyn Democrat and established nanny-stater, said he is "concerned” that people playing Pokemon Go, the viral augmented reality game, pose a risk to public safety.

"Like any new technology, it has its advantages and disadvantages, and like any new technology, it has to be looked at very, very carefully. Everything comes down to people’s responsibility as well as corporate responsibility,” Ortiz said Tuesday. "Every single one of us who might want to play this game have to be very cautious. Who’s sending what, and what is the follow up? Everyone should be cautious to make sure that no intruders will be able to tap into this and have people think they’re going to the park when in reality they’re going to a be targeted by some rapist. People could think they’re going to the bank, but in reality, someone is waiting to take their money.” 

Already, people in Baltimore and elsewhere have been mugged while glued to their phones, which display balls and digital avatars on videos of people's actual surroundings.
Ortiz said he was concerned people would play in busy streets, or while driving cars. The latter fear is shared by the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, whose leader, Terri Egan, warned that it could have “tragic real-world consequences.” 

"Catching virtual creatures to get to the next level is not worth risking your life or the lives of others,” she stated. 

Ortiz has a reputation at the Capitol for being a noodge: he has proposed banning the use of salt in restaurants, taxes on alcohol and sugary drinks as well as admission to strip clubs. 

He said he’s not prepared to introduce legislation relating to Pokemon Go or other games, at least not yet, but hopes game companies recognize potential risks in their products and react accordingly. He pointed to a recall announced this week of hoverboards — which, yes, Ortiz also carries a bill to regulate. 

"My big call is to the company, to watch what is happening. They should be vigilant before they become liable,” he said. "If it’s an issue they can pull out and fix, they won’t be liable. Otherwise, I will introduce legislation.”

So my immediate question comes back to this topic: not only do I worry about police harassing people of color who are safely playing the game in their own neighborhoods and homes, but how long before actually playing Pokemon Go becomes yet another violation of the law that police selectively enforce against people of color?

Here's an idea, if you're worried about regulating people's safety, DO SOMETHING ABOUT GUN CONTROL AND UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS RATHER THAN POKEMON GO.

Idiots.

This is going to be another long, brutal summer I think.

Going To Town With President Obama

President Obama will host a nationally televised town hall meeting on race in America tonight at 8 PM, and the Disney networks will cover it in its entirety.

In an unprecedented move, all of the networks owned by Walt Disney Co. will air a town hall with President Obama on race relations in prime time on Thursday.

The town hall event, to begin at 8 p.m., will be commercial free.

ABC-TV, ESPN, ABC News Digital, Freeform Digital, the WATCH ABC app, the WatchESPN app, Yahoo, and ABC Radio will all air the town hall, titled "The President and The People: A National Conversation.” 

It will air live from Washington, D.C., and will be produced by ABC News.

World News Tonight anchor David Muir will co-moderate the event. His co-moderator will be ESPN commentator Jemele Hill, who normally hosts a sports banter program called "His & Hers," with Michael Smith, on ESPN 2.

The president is scheduled to discuss race relations, policing and gun violence.

The town hall comes on the heels of a series of separate highly publicized shootings of African-American men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the sniper ambush killings of five police officers during a protest in Dallas last week.

I'm 110% for this and will definitely be watching this evening.  Pay attention, folks.  This is the president using his bully pulpit to an unprecedented degree at a time when it is most sorely needed.

No doubt Republicans will go insane over this and will demand investigations of the FCC for allowing this "abuse of ececutive power" to happen.

Not even kidding about that.  Watch.

StupidiNews!

• Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will take the unusual step of announcing his running mate before the party's convention on Friday morning.
• The case of which bathroom a Virginia transgender high school student can use goes to the Supreme Court as lawyers are seeking an emergency stay from a lower court ruling.
• Hungary has shut down a reactor at its Paks nuclear plant due to an equipment malfunction, officials say the reactor's automated systems kicked in preventing any safety issues.
• Japan's population continues to shrink as people are having fewer children, even as the number of foreigners in the country grew to 2.17 million in 2015. 
• Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota wants answers to the virtual world/real world privacy questions raised by the popularity of the Pokemon Go smartphone app.

Last Call For The Full Ginsburg

The NY Times is quite upset that Justice Ruth Bader Ginburg would voice an opinion about Donald Trump being less than optimal for America if he were elected president.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling.

Three times in the past week, Justice Ginsburg has publicly discussed her view of the presidential race, in the sharpest terms. In an interview with The Times published Sunday, Justice Ginsburg said, “I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” joking that if her husband were alive, he might have said, “It’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”

Earlier, in an interview with The Associated Press that appeared on Friday, when asked to consider a Trump victory, Justice Ginsburg replied, “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”

On Monday Justice Ginsburg doubled down, calling Mr. Trump “a faker,” who “has no consistency about him.” In that interview, with CNN, she added: “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”

The basic argument is that stooping to the level of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and uttering political proclamations about the executive branch is beneath Notorious RBG, particularly when they involve an upcoming election.  I can see that point of view, but then Donald Trump exploded on Twitter today and basically proved Justice Ginsburg was correct.

Trump on Tuesday fired back.

“I think it’s a disgrace to the court, and I think she should apologize to the court,” he told the newspaper. “And I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible.”

He added, “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly.”

Now, can you imagine what thin-skinned Trump would dare to do if the Supreme Court ever ruled against his administration?

Pretty sure Justice Ginsburg made us all consider that this week.