Last Call For Bad Math

You can always count on the Assrocket to compare apples to Easter Island head statues.

What was the racial breakdown of those who were shot by police in 2015? The largest number, 494, almost exactly half, were white. 258 were black, 172 were Hispanic, and the remaining 66 were either “other” or unknown. (Interestingly, Asians are rarely shot by police officers.)

The 258 blacks represent 26% of the total. That is about double the percentage of blacks in the American population. Is that prima facie evidence of racism on the part of law enforcement? Of course not. It is common knowledge that blacks have an unusually high rate of contact with the police, both as victims and as perpetrators. In 2012-2013, the Department of Justice found that blacks were the perpetrators of 24% of all violent crimes where the race of the perpetrator was known (in 7.8% of violent crimes, it was unknown).

So the percentage of blacks fatally shot by police officers (26%) is almost exactly equal to the percentage of blacks committing violent crimes (24%). Indeed, given that the black homicide rate is around eight times the white rate, it is surprising that the portion of blacks fatally shot by policemen is not higher.

I'm trying to think about this from a number of angles, and all I can come up with is "committing a violent crime" is equal to "being shot and killed by police".  I mean, that's exactly the two statistics he's comparing here, so he must be implying that if you commit a violent crime, you should be killed by a cop.

I mean, not sent to jail, or captured alive, or evaluated for possible mental health issues, or treated as a human being, it's just "police should be executing black people and actually I don't know why that rate isn't higher." Note the default here.

Hindraker has thrown out some doozies over the years, but this may actually be the worst, most callow, heartless, staggeringly false argument for the justification of police violence against black America that I have ever seen.

Why aren't more of us being killed by cops?  He seriously wants to know this.

It's astonishing.

It's A Mean Girls World

NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd loathes Hillary Clinton to the point of near-psychotic obsession with her, and now that President Obama has endorsed and appeared with Clinton at campaign events, Dowd is apparently going to be spending the rest of the campaign coming for him as well.

In a mere 11 days, arrogant, selfish actions by the Clintons contaminated three of the purest brands in Washington — Barack Obama, James Comey and Loretta Lynch — and jeopardized the futures of Hillary’s most loyal aides.

It’s quaint, looking back at her appointment as secretary of state, how Obama tried to get Hillary without the shadiness. (Which is what we all want, of course.)

The president and his aides attempted to keep a rein on Clinton’s State Department — refusing to let her bring in her hit man, Sidney Blumenthal.

But in the end, Hillary’s goo got on Obama anyhow. On Tuesday, after Comey managed to make both Democrats and Republicans angry by indicting Clinton politically but not legally, Barry and Hillary flew to Charlotte, N.C., for their first joint campaign appearance.

Obama was left in the awkward position of vouching for Hillary’s “steady judgment” to run an angry, violent, jittery nation on the very day that his F.B.I. director lambasted her errant judgment on circumventing the State Department email system, making it clear that she had been lying to the American public for the last 16 months.

Comey, who was then yanked up to Capitol Hill for a hearing on Thursday, revealed that instead of no emails with classified information, as Hillary had insisted, there were 110, of those turned over to the State Department. Instead of Clinton’s assurances that the server in the basement in Chappaqua had never been breached, Comey said it was possible that hostile actors had hacked Clinton’s email account. Among the emails not given to State, he said at least three contained classified information.

Hillary had already compromised the president, who feels he needs her to cement his legacy. Obama angered F.B.I. agents when he wasinterviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last fall and undermined the bureau’s investigation by exonerating Hillary before the F.B.I. was done with its work, saying pre-emptively, “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Hillary willfully put herself above the rules — again — and a president, campaign and party are all left twisting themselves into pretzels defending her.

Obama aimed to have no shadows, but the Clintons operate in shadows.

This is a woman who hates Hillary Clinton with a passion bordering on obsession, to the point where I expect a boiled pet rabbit to show up in Hillary's kitchen.  Not only is Dowd reduced to repeating debunked Fox News talking points, but she doesn't even bother to hide her contempt for both Clinton and Obama at this point.

It's not a good look for her.

Sunday Long Read: Junk Science

The War on Drugs is designed to send as many people to prison as long as possible in order to enrich the pockets of the prison industry and its investors.  No wonder then that a $2 drug test with serious false positive flaws sends thousands of people to prison every month in America.

AMY ALBRITTON can’t remember if her boyfriend signaled when he changed lanes late that August afternoon in 2010. But suddenly the lights on the Houston Police patrol car were flashing behind them, and Anthony Wilson was navigating Albritton’s white Chrysler Concorde to a stop in a strip-mall parking lot. It was an especially unwelcome hassle. Wilson was in Houston to see about an oil-rig job; Albritton, volunteering her car, had come along for what she imagined would be a vacation of sorts. She managed an apartment complex back in Monroe, La., and the younger of her two sons — Landon, 16, who had been disabled from birth by cerebral palsy — was with his father for the week. After five hours of driving through the monotony of flat woodland, the couple had checked into a motel, carted their luggage to the room and returned to the car, too hungry to rest but too drained to seek out anything more than fast food. Now two officers stepped out of their patrol car and approached.

Albritton, 43, had dressed up for the trip — black blouse, turquoise necklace, small silver hoop earrings glinting through her shoulder-length blond hair. Wilson, 28, was more casually dressed, in a white T-shirt and jeans, and wore a strained expression that worried Albritton. One officer asked him for his license and registration. Wilson said he didn’t have a license. The car’s registration showed that it belonged to Albritton.

The officer asked Wilson to step out of the car. Wilson complied. The officer leaned in over the driver’s seat, looked around, then called to his partner; in the report Officer Duc Nguyen later filed, he wrote that he saw a needle in the car’s ceiling lining. Albritton didn’t know what he was talking about. Before she could protest, Officer David Helms had come around to her window and was asking for consent to search the car. If Albritton refused, Helms said, he would call for a drug-sniffing dog. Albritton agreed to the full search and waited nervously outside the car.

Helms spotted a white crumb on the floor. In the report, Nguyen wrote that the officers believed the crumb was crack cocaine. They handcuffed Wilson and Albritton and stood them in front of the patrol car, its lights still flashing. They were on display for rush-hour traffic, criminal suspects sweating through their clothes in the 93-degree heat.

As Nguyen and Helms continued the search, tensions grew. Albritton, shouting over the sound of traffic, tried to explain that they had the wrong idea — at least about her. She had been dating Wilson for only a month; she implored him to admit that if there were drugs, they were his alone. Wilson just shook his head, Albritton now recalls. Fear surging, she shouted that there weren’t any drugs in her car even as she insisted that she didn’t know that Wilson had brought drugs. The search turned up only one other item of interest — a box of BC Powder, an over-the-counter pain reliever. Albritton never saw the needle. The crumb from the floor was all that mattered now.

At the police academy four years earlier, Helms was taught that to make a drug arrest on the street, an officer needed to conduct an elementary chemical test, right then and there. It’s what cops routinely do across the country every day while making thousands upon thousands of drug arrests. Helms popped the trunk of his patrol car, pulled out a small plastic pouch that contained a vial of pink liquid and returned to Albritton. He opened the lid on the vial and dropped a tiny piece of the crumb into the liquid. If the liquid remained pink, that would rule out the presence of cocaine. If it turned blue, then Albritton, as the owner of the car, could become a felony defendant.

Helms waved the vial in front of her face and said, “You’re busted.”

The test was wrong, of course.  But Albritton was railroaded within days into pleading guilty and serving a 45-day sentence in a Texas county jail on felony posession of crack cocaine.  She lost her job, her apartment, and her livelihood.  Nobody back home knew she was in jail.

The field tests seem simple, but a lot can go wrong. Some tests, including the one the Houston police officers used to analyze the crumb on the floor of Albritton’s car, use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners. Other tests use three tubes, which the officer can break in a specific order to rule out everything but the drug in question — but if the officer breaks the tubes in the wrong order, that, too, can invalidate the results. The environment can also present problems. Cold weather slows the color development; heat speeds it up, or sometimes prevents a color reaction from taking place at all. Poor lighting on the street — flashing police lights, sun glare, street lamps — often prevents officers from making the fine distinctions that could make the difference between an arrest and a release.

There are no established error rates for the field tests, in part because their accuracy varies so widely depending on who is using them and how. In Las Vegas, authorities re-examined a sampling of cocaine field tests conducted between 2010 and 2013 and found that 33 percent of them were false positives. Data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab system show that 21 percent of evidence that the police listed as methamphetamine after identifying it was not methamphetamine, and half of those false positives were not any kind of illegal drug at all. In one notable Florida episode, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies produced 15 false positives for methamphetamine in the first seven months of 2014. When we examined the department’s records, they showed that officers, faced with somewhat ambiguous directions on the pouches, had simply misunderstood which colors indicated a positive result.

ProPublica found hundreds of wrongful convictions and plea deals just in Harris County Texas and Houston alone.  Across the country, the number is easily in the tens of thousands, and yet these folks have to live their lives as convicted felons for years and sometimes decades.

Amy Albritton's conviction was overturned.  Many, many more will never be that lucky.

The Dangerous Days After Dallas, Con't.

It took less than 24 hours after the deaths in Dallas for the right-wing nutjobs over at Oath Keepers to declare war on the rest of the country. Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch:

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, responded today to last night’s sniper ambush of police officers near a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas by calling for “patriotic Americans” to “go armed at all times” and “reestablish the militia system.”

Rhodes wrote on the Oath Keepers website that the shooting was the product of “the Marxist agenda to divide and conquer along racial lines and inspire blind hatred against all police, and against this nation in general,” warning that it would be used to “further militarize” the police and “trample on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Tying the shooting in Dallas to the attack on an Orlando gay nightclub by an ISIS-inspired terrorist, Rhodes wrote that what “is now needed, more than ever, is the reestablishment of the militia of the people, trained, equipped and organized in each town, to defend against what is now clearly a ‘Tet Offensive’ American style.”

Understand that this has always been the end game for Rhodes and Oath Keepers and the open carry movement, the Minutemen Militia, the Council of Conservative Citizens, all of it.  Armed mobs patrolling the streets and terrorizing those people, the rebirth of Jim Crow lynch mobs all over the country. Scared black and brown people, cowering, put in their place by the modern fugitive slave catchers.

Don't believe me?  Rhodes himself all but says so.

Therefore, I call on all Oath Keepers, and all patriotic Americans, to come to the aid of their local police, and to the aid of their communities, and unite and coordinate in mutual defense against this orchestrated campaign of Marxist terrorism, which is the modern version of the wave of terrorism we saw in the late 60s and early 70s by the Marxist Weather Underground and related groups (who also frequently targeted police), along with the closely related Jihadist terrorism offensive, with Orlando being merely the latest in an ongoing wave of attacks. What is now needed, more than ever, is the reestablishment of the militia of the people, trained, equipped and organized in each town, to defend against what is now clearly a “Tet Offensive” American style, as Navy SEAL veteran Matt Bracken warned. While we work to reestablish that militia system, you must go armed at all times, and be prepared, at all times, to defend your community against these Marxist terrorists as well as their Islamist terror allies. Remember, they are in league, and you are their common enemy and their common targets.

The power elites who control, aid, abet and fund these terrorists will attempt to use these attacks to further destroy what little is left of our Constitution, but the one thing they do not want, and the one thing they truly fear, is for We the People, who are still armed, to come together and restore the militia of the several states. And the elites’ terrorist proxies among the Marxists and Islamacists also fear such a revitalization and restoration. So, let’s do what our enemies all fear most. Let us resurrect and restore the militia system of this nation, which the Founders told us is necessary for the security of a free state, and which must consist of ALL of the able bodied citizens of your community. It is time to finally get down to doing what is necessary. It starts with you and your neighbors coming together, now, to address this grave threat, and for you to lead them toward the only constitutional solution – the revitalization of the militia.

Armed mobs, guys.  And who is the "Marxist, Islamist" enemy?

Whomever the armed mob with the AR-15s says is one. Whoever resists.

That's the America they've always wanted and now they are openly calling for war in the streets.

Last Call For The Age Of Austerity

If you've taken a flight anywhere this summer, you've been tied up in long TSA security check lines for hours, maybe even missing your flight as a result.  Guess what? As long as Republicans remain in charge of the House of Representatives and in state legislatures across the country, austerity cuts will only get worse.

This year, discretionary spending — which encompasses airport security, infrastructure, education, research and development and much more — will be lower than it was in 2005. (All spending figures are adjusted for inflation.)

For some, the reductions are dramatic. Since 2003, the National Institutes of Health, which supports critical research into diseases ranging from cancer to AIDS, have seen their funding fall by 23 percent, forcing an 8 percent reduction in grants to researchers even as applications were rising by 50 percent.

In the last decade, inflation-adjusted spending on all education has fallen by 11 percent, including more significant cuts in grants for K-12 programs and to school districts serving low-income students.

Since 2010, the Internal Revenue Service’s budget has been slashed by about 18 percent, even as the I.R.S. was given new duties in connection with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The result: The enforcement staff has shrunk by 23 percent, leading to a similar reduction in the number of audits.

And fewer audits have meant additional uncollected taxes, estimated at $14 billion over the past two years. Furthermore, almost a million pieces of correspondence from taxpayers await replies.

Then there’s the Environmental Protection Agency, whose budget has been cut by an enormous 27 percent — about $3 billion since 2010. As a result, over the same period the agency had to eliminate more than 2,000 workers, bringing its staffing to the lowest level since 1989. More problems like the poisoned water in Flint, Mich., are easy to imagine. 

And keep in mind, Republicans in Congress don't give a damn about the deficit, all they care about are tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, and for starving out as many executive agencies as they can.

Beginning last fall, sensible members of both parties on Capitol Hill recognized that these important areas needed bolstering, so $80 billion in new discretionary spending was authorized for the next two years.

But even with that increase and a similar one in December 2013, total spending on these programs will rise by barely the inflation rate between 2014 and 2017. (Happily, the N.I.H. and the I.R.S. will see modestly larger increases.)

Then, by sliding extra money to the military and Medicare, Congress nearly doubled the cost of the $80 billion deal to $154 billion while choosing to counterbalance only about half the tab with legitimate savings.

According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the remainder either wasn’t paid for at all ($56 billion) or was offset with phony cuts ($20 billion), like changing pension accounting to front-load corporate taxes.

A few months later, Congress went one step further and retroactively extended a raft of expired tax provisions — many of them egregious giveaways like accelerated depreciation for companies — without even a pretense of paying for them. As a result of the fiddling and fudging, the projected 2017 deficit rose to $561 billion, from the $416 billion that was estimated just six months earlier.

That's right: the cost of restoring some funding to the EPA and the IRS?  Extending corporate tax cuts that only made the deficit larger.

And that's how the government has worked for the last six years, and most likely another six at the minimum.

The Neighbors Are Worried About Us

Europe certainly has enough problems to deal with right now with the EU disintegrating, a stagnant economic picture at best, and the rise of violent ultra-nationalism. Needless to say, the problems we have here in the US aren't helping them one bit, and our friends across the pond are spooked, particularly in Paris where the wounds of terrorism are still fresh.

French President Francois Hollande told a NATO conference on Saturday that the U.S. presidential election should not put into question transatlantic relations.

Hollande said a European defense separate from NATO would not make any sense.

Of course, Donald Trump calls NATO obsolete and as president, says he would consider pulling out of the organization completely, so guess what, Francois? The US presidential election will definitely affect transatlantic relations.

Savage asked, “What would your first priority be as president?”

Trump’s answer was that, “Number one would be knock out some of the executive orders from Obama.” He said he would “start Keystone right away” because “we need jobs,” regardless of the fact that Keystone XL won’t create any jobs, as has been well-documented. Talking points know no facts, however.

That’s when Trump launched into his plan to turn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a pay-for-protection racket:

“I’d contact countries and I’d say, ‘folks, we love protecting you, we want to continue to protect you,’ but they’re not living up to their bargain. You know, you’re talking about billions and billions of dollars, Michael, numbers that you wouldn’t even believe. But they’re not living up to their bargain and you know we cannot continue to be the policeman for the world. Now, I don’t mind, but they have to pay, they have to pay. If you look at the NATO countries – 28 countries – they’re not living up to what they’re supposed to be living up to. They’re not paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which is very little by the way. So what are we supposed to get into World War III over a country that doesn’t respect us enough to even pay what they’re supposed to be paying?”

This alienating our allies, Trump assured Savage, will make “America a very strong country again.”

That’s right: Trump’s “What’s in it for me?” approach to life directed at foreign policy. At our allies. Nations with which we share a long mutual interest in security and a stable global economy. Republicans have long said the country should be run like a corporation, and Donald Trump intends to do just that.

Yeah, if I were France, I'd be pretty goddamn nervous too.

The Dangerous Days After Dallas

Needless to say, with five dead officers in Dallas, police across the nation aren't exactly in a tolerant mood of Black Lives Matter protests anymore, and a peaceful protest in Phoenix, Arizona last night turned brutal as cops in riot gear unloaded pepper spray and beanbags to end the demonstration nearly as quickly as it started. 

The protest following the police officer-involved shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had been scheduled earlier in the week, with city authorities asking organizers to hold off after the tragic shooting deaths of police officers in Dallas the previous evening.

Undeterred, marchers showed up late Friday night and attempted to shut down the I-10 freeway when they were met by a phalanx of police in riot gear who blocked them and demanded that they disperse.

As the crowd chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot,” police unleashed wave after wave of pepper spray as the protestors fled, with police following some and making arrests.

According to police, three men were taken into custody for throwing rocks at officers, while six people were treated for injuries from the pepper spray or from falling as they ran.

The message is clear: we're all living in Ferguson, Missouri now.  Protest of police will no longer be tolerated in America.

Last Call For Jobapalooza

And now for some really fantastic news:  Job growth was way better than expected in June and blew away those mediocre May numbers.

The US economy added 287,000 jobs in June, many more than expected, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It was the biggest gain in eight months and was stronger than even the most optimistic forecasts among economists. They had estimated that nonfarm payrolls grew by 180,000, according to Bloomberg.

What was at stake in this jobs report was confirmation that a hiring slowdown had not hit the US economy. In May, just 38,000 job gains were initially reported, excluding the impact of the 35,000 Verizon workers who were on strike.

This was revised lower to 11,000. 

"Last month’s jobs report caught most economists by surprise, and the U.S. is waiting for the other shoe to drop, looking for signs of a broader economic slowdown," said Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain in a preview.

The unemployment rate increased to 4.9% from 4.7% as more people came back into the workforce. The labor force participation rate rose to 62.7% from 62.6%. And, the number of people who worked part-time for economic reasons plunged.

So no, we're not heading into a recession, May was a blip in the system and June reverted us back to signs of strong continued job growth in 2016.

Meanwhile, Not In Dallas...

It's possible that your reaction blaming President Obama for slain police officers may not be the best idea, as a general rule.

Former Illinois Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh came under fire Thursday night for an inflammatory tweet that included the phrase "watch out Obama" after multiple Dallas police officers were shot, four fatally, by two snipers at the end of a protest against nationwide officer-involved shootings. 

"3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded," Walsh posted. "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you."

Then he doubles down:

The tweet was deleted, but not before a firestorm erupted on the platform that included singer John Legend calling for Walsh to be arrested. 

"Joe Walsh needs to be arrested for threatening our President," Legend tweeted. 

Walsh later tweeted that he "wasn't calling for violence, against Obama or anyone." 

"Obama's words & BLM's deeds have gotten cops killed," he wrote. "Time for us to defend our cops."

Remember, this man was an elected member of Congress saying this, telling the President and black people to watch out because "real America" is coming for them.

So who's going to take Walsh up on his offer?

An Amazing Admission

I honestly don't think I've ever heard a state governor say something of this magnitude regarding police killings of black people, as Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton openly admitted that he didn't believe Philando Castile would have been shot and killed if he were white.

Dayton said Castile would be alive if he hadn't been black, adding that the shooting demonstrated a troubling pattern of racism among some Minnesota law enforcement officers.

"Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver were white?" he asked. "I don't think it would have."

Dayton said he has spoken with Minnesota's senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and the area's House representatives and would be demanding a Justice Department investigation.

"I can't say how shocked I am and deeply, deeply offended that this would happen to somebody in Minnesota," Dayton said grimly. "No one should be shot in Minnesota for a taillight being out of function. No one should be killed in Minnesota while seated in their car."

The Justice Department is already investigating the Louisiana shooting, and it said Thursday that it was assessing the Minnesota incident.

The St. Anthony Police Department, which covers Falcon Heights, a community of 5,300 people, hasn't detailed what led up to the shooting or said how many times Castile was shot. The officer hasn't been identified, but police described him as a five-year veteran and said he has been placed on paid administrative leave, as is standard in shooting investigations.

I already had a pretty solid opinion of Mark Dayton and Minnesota Dems in general, having lived in the state for a couple years back in my dot com days, but to hear this candid opinion out of the mouth of a sitting governor is staggering.

And here's the thing: I believe Dayton when he says he's going to follow this up with action and reform in the state.

President Obama also weighed in on this week's killings in remarks from the NATO summit in Warsaw.

"These are not isolated incidents," Obama said. "They are symptomatic of a broader set of racial inequalities that exist in our criminal justice system."

Obama said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the shootings, but he made an impassioned plea for all Americans to recognize that "a big chunk of our citizenry feels that because of the color of their skin that they are not being treated the same."

Obama disputed the notion that the explosive issue of police violence was solely a racial matter, calling it "an American issue that we should all care about" and adding: "All fair-minded people should be concerned."

And he specifically urged that Americans not equate protests with opposition to law enforcement.

"There is no contradiction between us supporting law enforcement ... and also saying that there are problems across our criminal justice system," he said.

"There are biases — some conscious, some unconscious — that have to be rooted out. That's not an attack on law enforcement. That's reflective of the values the vast majority of law enforcement brings to the job."

Maybe I'm stupidly naive for believing that something will get done on the police reform front, as police departments across the country have largely been ignoring President Obama and Department of Justice reform guidelines (one notable exception: here in Cincy) but I have to believe at some point things will get better.

I'm hoping this time it does.

StupidiNews!

• Dallas police say five officers are dead, six more "gravely injured" as multiple suspects with rifles opened up on a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest last night in downtown Dallas.
• President Obama has condemned the Dallas police killings, calling the attack a "tremendous tragedy" as he continues to attend a NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland.
• The Senate has passed a food labeling bill that would indicate products contain genetically modified ingredients, but critics say the legislation's loopholes render it useless.
• Vice President Joe Biden will deliver a speech on US trade policy in San Diego next week, he is expected to rebut claims by Donald Trump about America's need for stiff trade tariffs.
• Security firm Check Point Software says 10 million Android phones are infected by Chinese malware that generates millions per year in ad revenue and is nearly impossible to remove.

Last Call For Cadillacs And Dinosaurs

After years of legal wrangling and tens of millions in tax breaks, Kentucky's status as anti-science embarassment full of slack-jawed yokels enters a new phase with the grand opening of Ark Encounter in nearby Grant County.

A 510-foot-long, $100 million Noah's ark attraction built by Christians who say the biblical story really happened has opened in Kentucky.

People lined up as much as an hour before the Ark Encounter opened near Williamstown at 9 a.m. 

Since its announcement in 2010, the ark project has rankled opponents who say the attraction will be detrimental to science education and shouldn't have won state tax incentives. 

"I believe this is going to be one of the greatest Christian outreaches of this era in history," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, the ministry that built the ark. 

Ham said the massive ark, based on the tale of a man who got an end-of-the-world warning from God about a massive flood, stands as proof that the stories of the Bible are true. The group invited media and thousands of supporters for a preview Tuesday, the first glimpse inside the giant, mostly wood structure. 

"People are going to come from all over the world," Ham said to thousands of people in front of the ark during a Tuesday preview. 

Ham's group has estimated it will draw 2 million visitors in its first year, putting it on par with some of the big-ticket attractions in nearby Cincinnati.

I'm thinking Ham is overestimating that number by an order of magnitude or so, which means this place is probably going to go belly up before too long.  Frankly, I hope the drainage at the park is so bad the place floods and the ark sinks, but I'm nowhere near that lucky.

Still, it'll bring a couple hundred jobs (for good Christians only, mind you) in Grant County, which does badly need them.  Sure, those jobs are coming at a cost of a quarter-million in tax breaks each, but what would I know about math, I live in Kentucky, right?

Bevinstan needs some attractions to pull the rubes in.  We can't be the nation's laughing stock 100% due solely to Matt Bevin, after all.

Meanwhile In Gunmerica, Con't

So apparently the House GOP won't be holding those gun control votes they promised to hold after all, becuase they're either too busy grilling James Comey or that the gun fetish wing of the party is threatening full revolt.

House Republican infighting has forced GOP leaders to indefinitely postpone a vote on an "anti-terrorism package," leaving Congress with no legislative response to last month's massacre in Orlando. 

As Democrats are pushing Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for votes on their gun control proposals, taking to the House floor Thursday to read the names of victims of gun violence, Republicans can’t agree among themselves on what they will support in a gun package.

While some in House leadership hold out hope for a vote before the July 15 recess, a source cautioned that "there is a lot of work to do to get there."

So Paul Ryan is bailing on his word to Democrats, and there's basically no reason why anyone should ever belive the guy again.

Can't say you didn't see this coming, though.

Black Lives Still Matter

On Tuesday Alton Sterling was murdered in Baton Rouge by police, yesterday Philando Castile was killed in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.  

A 32-year-old man has died after an officer-involved shooting Wednesday night in Falcon Heights.

Philando Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, says he died at Hennepin County Medical Center after 11 p.m.

St. Anthony Police said in a press release that officers pulled over a vehicle at Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street at about 9 p.m. They said “shots were fire” during the traffic stop, and a handgun was recovered at the scene. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating.

Castile’s family says his girlfriend, Lavisha Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter, Diamond, were in the car at the time. Reynolds was taken into custody Wednesday night.

They pulled him over for a busted tail light with a woman and a 4-year-old in the car. Castille informed the officer that he had a legal handgun in the glove compartment, and that he was reaching for his wallet in his back pocket.

And then the officer shot him 4 times.  Lavisha Reynolds recorded the stop and the aftermath on her phone.

Reynolds, who was in the front passenger seat, says in the video that they were pulled over for a broken tail light. She says police asked Castile, who was driving, for his license and registration.

She says as Castile was reaching for his wallet, he informed officers that he had a firearm in his possession, and a conceal-and-carry permit.

Reynolds says in the video that an officer then shot her boyfriend four times.

The officer in the video at one point screams, “I told him not to reach for it! I told him to get his hand out …”

Reynolds tells the officer, “You told him to get his I.D., sir, his driver’s license.”

She pans the cellphone camera over Castile, who is covered in blood.

“Oh my God, please don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that,” Reynolds said.

The officer, whose gun is drawn the entire time, tells Reynolds to, “Keep your hands where they are.”

“Yes I will, sir, I’ll keep my hands where they are,” she said.

In the video you can see Castille writhing in pain in the driver's seat, his final moments passing. Reynolds is very, very calm considering the officer just blasted the person next to her, because she knows that if she gets hysterical here, she will be murdered too.

The cop is screaming and cursing because he knows he screwed up big time, and he's been caught.  In no way was this justified.

And so another black man died to a cop in America last night.

Black lives do matter.

StupidiNews!

• A second black man is dead from a police shooting in two days as Philando Castille was killed in St. Paul, Minnesota at a traffic stop for a broken tail light, two witnesses were in the car.
• The United Nations has leveled new sanctions against North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un over human rights abuses in response to several North Korean missile tests this year.
• An attack by Islamic militants in Bangladesh has killed 3 and wounded 14 as police were protecting an Eid festival marking the end of Ramadan.
• Sen. Bernie Sanders is reportedly in talks to endorse Hillary Clinton at a joint event in New Hampshire next week ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
• Cable giant Comcast says that it's not economically viable or even technically possible to comply with new FCC rules governing third-party cable boxes and applications.

Last Call For At Long Last

It's official: no charges for Hillary Clinton.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday said the Justice Department has decided not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton or her aides and will close the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The announcement comes a day after FBI Director James Comey held a press conference in which he said “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue a case against Clinton, even though she and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified material.

Lynch's statement provides further relief to Clinton, whose presidential campaign has been dogged by the email scandal, which spawned myriad probes and lawsuits, some of which will continue even as the DOJ’s investigation ends.

“Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State,” Lynch said. “I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”

Lynch had previously said that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation, a declaration that came after Lynch came under fire for an impromptu meeting she had with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac late last month.

And oh boy, the Republicans are never going to let this go, with Comey and Lynch now facing the House GOP starting tomorrow.  But they haven't let anything go over the last eight years, why start now?

Black Lives Still Matter

As I mentioned in this morning's StupidiNews, we've got yet another example of police executing a black man in front of witnesses and captured on video, this time for the capital offense of selling CDs outside a convenience store, this time in Baton Rouge.

The video showed two Baton Rouge police officers attempting to detain Alton Sterling after the officers responded to a call “from a complainant who stated that a black male who was selling music cd’s and wearing a red shirt threatened him with a gun” outside the Triple S Food Mart, a convenience store, a Facebook post by Baton Rouge Police Department said. Police said they responded about 12:35 a.m. 

Sterling was shot and killed while pinned down by the officers. 

His killing is the latest in a nationwide string of fatal police-involved arrests captured on video. Like many others, the first versions of what happened are coming more from a video showing a fragment of the incident than from police, who have had relatively little to say so far. Thus no clear picture has yet to emerge of the full sequence of events that led to the death. 

The cellphone video of the incident surfaced on social media. The footage began with police standing a few feet from Sterling. A loud pop — like that of a stun gun — can be heard. 

“Get on the ground,” a police officer yelled. 

“Get on the ground,” the voice yelled again, followed by a second pop. 

Sterling, a large man, remained on his feet. 

A police officer tackled him over the hood of a silver car, then onto the ground. 

Meanwhile, another restrained his left arm behind his back and knelt on it. 

“He’s got a gun,” someone yelled. 

“Gun. Gun.” 

Both officers drew their pistols from their holsters. In the video, Sterling appeared to be fairly immobile. 

Then, the officers shouted something unintelligible, which seemed to include the phrase “going for the gun.” 

Two noises that sounded like shots rang out immediately after. 

Whoever filmed the video then dropped the cellphone.

I'm not showing the video, because I'm getting sick of the black death porn aspect of these police killings.  It's there at the WaPo story if you want to view it, and it's your call if you want to watch it.  I don't need to. Having said that, without the iPhone video of the incident, Sterling's death would have been just another statistic.

Although both officers were wearing body cameras, the Baton Rouge Police Chief reportedly told Louisiana State Rep. Denise Marcelle (D) that they both fell off during the incident and didn’t capture any footage of the incident. 

Civilian cellphone footage filmed from a nearby car shows police confronting a man in a red shirt, purported to be Sterling, and yelling at him to get on the ground. An officer tackles him, throwing him onto a car hood and then to the cement. Both officers are on on top of Sterling, who appears to be flat on the ground when one shouts “He’s got a gun.” The video then shows the other officer shooting at point-black range; The person shooting the video reacts, shifting the video from the scene, and at least two more shots are heard. 

“Thank god for the iPhone because without the iPhone they might have gotten away,” said Mike McClanahan, the president of the Baton Rouge chapter of the NAACP, at a press conference. 

The attorney for the Sterling family, Edmond Jordan, said in a press conference that one of the Baton Rouge Police Department’s first moves was to confiscate the store surveillance camera — along with its entire video system — without providing the store owner with a warrant. Police Chief Carl Dabadie also told Rep. Marcelle that there is dashboard camera footage from one of the squad cars. 

“There are no criminal charges pending against anyone as far as we know,” Jordan said. “So why are they holding on to this video?” 

“I don’t think the department knew that there was another video out there,” he said.

No, and if the cops had shaken the witness in the car down and taken their phone, we'd never have known. Governor John bel Edwards is referring the investigation to the feds, needless to say.

What I know is this: Louisiana is an open carry state for both long guns and handguns and has been for years, both police officers say their body cameras came off during the altercation and that they don't have footage, and Alton Sterling is dead.

What I know is that people I consider friends will gaslight this again in order to justify Sterling's death, and that they will continue to believe that the Second Amendment is there for the protection of citizens against the government, and that Sterling's life was forfeit the second he "refused to comply" with the officers.

What I know is that this will happen again, be caught on video in another American town, more protests will happen, and that not a damn thing will change.

What I know is that I'm bone weary of this happening, and that there's little I can do in order to try to stop it.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, we're going to enshrine into law that police are above said law.

And so it goes in America.

Meanwhile In Gunmerica...

The issue of gun violence isn't going away, as much as Republicans would like to use the power of "Thoughtsnprayers" to make the issue vanish.  It's not, not with Donald Trump remaining an albatross around the necks of every Republican running in November.  It looks like we're moving into the deal-making stage ahead of the convention recess.

House Democrats and Republicans seem just as destined for an election-season clash over guns as they did before a Democratic sit-in on the chamber's floor ushered in lawmakers' July 4 recess two weeks ago. 

Nearly a month after the Orlando mass-shooting catapulted the issue back onto the nation's radar, the two parties were meeting separately Wednesday to map strategy. 

Republicans have incorporated some gun curbs into a broader bill aimed at addressing domestic terrorism that the House has planned to debate this week, though their plans seemed less certain late Tuesday. Democrats are insisting on amendments tightening gun restrictions far further, which House Speaker Paul Ryan seemed to nix Tuesday, and each party says the other's proposals are defective. 

Ryan, R-Wis., met Tuesday evening with two leaders of the sit-in, Reps. John Lewis of Georgia and John Larson of Connecticut. The Democrats said Ryan listened respectfully and mentioned his party's concerns about protecting gun owners' rights, but made no promise to allow votes on the Democrats' proposals. 

Asked what Democrats would do if they are denied votes, Lewis, the civil rights hero, wasn't specific but said: "There will be action. We will not be silent." 

Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the two parties "have different views on how to achieve a shared goal of preventing gun deaths," especially over protecting gun owners' rights. She said the next steps on anti-terror legislation "will be discussed and determined by the majority in the coming days." 

That seemed less assured than earlier comments from Ryan that the House would vote on the GOP legislation this week. Late Tuesday, Republicans were working to line up GOP support for their own measure, with some having questions about the bill's procedural protections for gun owners and other concerns. 

Despite the uncertainty, GOP leaders' hopes of staging a vote on their proposal underscored the pressure they've felt since the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 victims dead. Since the 2012 slaying of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, Republicans have not brought any legislation broadly restricting guns to the House floor.

Ryan wants this vote over and done with so it becomes the Senate's problem, which is what John Boshner would have done a month ago.  Sadly, Ryan is even worse at this whole Speaker thing than Orange Julius was, and that's really saying something.

Still, Ryan should be able to say that he kept his promise of holding a vote, and then watch the measure die.

Well, unless the House revolts again.  You never know.

StupidiNews!

• Former South African sprinter Oscar Pistorious has been sentenced to six years in prison for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
• Footage from a mobile phone allegedly shows two Baton Rouge police officers holding 37-year-old Alton Sterling to the ground and then executing the unarmed black man.
• Results of a seven-year inquiry into Britain's entrance into the Iraq War will be released today with the focus on former PM Tony Blair and his decision in 2003 to join the US invasion.
• The private equity firm that put Hostess Brands back on America's shelves are hoping to turn Twinkies and King Dons into hipster nostalgia.
• EU lawmakers will go ahead with new regulations to identify and remove terrorist content online, the plan will now go to individual EU countries for final revision.

Last Call For Free Of Charge

FBI Director James Comey gave Republicans and Bernie Sanders supporters the bad news today that the agency is not formally recommending charges against Hillary Clinton over her email server. Ian Millhiser explains why charges aren't forthcoming:

Clinton, like her two most recent predecessors Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, maintained at least two email accounts: one specifically set up to receive classified information and the other for other communications. Clinton’s non-classified email was hosted on a private server (as opposed to Powell’s non-classified email address, which was an AOL account), while the classified email could only be accessed if Clinton complied with a byzantine array of security rules. 

Clinton says that the emails she received at her non-classified address “were not marked classified,” although she acknowledges that “there are disagreements among agencies on what should have been perhaps classified retroactively.” Government officials also confirm that “none of the emails the State Department redacted, or any other emails made public, contained classification markings at the time they were sent.” Although the FBI determined that 110 emails did contain classified information. 

This matters because of a legal concept called mens rea. As a general rule, most crimes require prosecutors to prove that an individual acted with a particular state of mind before they can be convicted of a specific crime. Most federal laws dealing with classified information require someone to “knowingly” violate that law in order to sustain a conviction. Thus, Clinton cannot be charged with transmitting or receiving classified information based on that fact alone. She had to have acted with knowledge that specific information was classified when it was transmitted. There is little, if any, evidence that Clinton possessed this state of mind.

Stupid? Sure. Criminal? Nope. And nearly impossible to prove.

But apparently people are worried that this might be worse than the raging orange anti-semite racist Islamophobe the other team is running.

It’s hard to read Comey’s statement as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She did send and receive classified emails. The setup did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team did delete emails as personal that contained professional information. 

Those are facts, facts delivered by the Justice Department of a Democratic administration. And those facts run absolutely counter to the narrative put forth by the Clinton operation: that this whole thing was a Republican witch-hunt pushed by a bored and adversarial media. 

Now for the key question: How much do the FBI findings hurt her campaign? 

Clinton did avoid indictment, a ruling that would have effectively ended her campaign or left it so badly weakened that there would have been a major move within Democratic circles to replace her as the nominee. 

That said, campaigns aren’t governed by the ultimate legality of what Clinton did or didn’t do. So, while dodging an indictment is a good thing — she isn’t under criminal investigation and remains a candidate — it’s a far different thing from being cleared (or even close to it) in the court of public opinion.

Umm, Hillary Clinton has been triend in the court of public opinion since Whitewater, guys. The notion that large swaths of voters are going to be affected by this narrative is next to zero (unlike an actual indictment.)

So no, barring Loretta Lynch indicting, it's not going to happen, kids.