Good News / Bad News / Other Bad News

It’s rather sad that the good news today is that a cop is going to be indicted for murdering an unarmed black man. See also Zandar from this morning before the announcement.

Elsewhere: I haven’t had time to write about them, but you’ve probably heard about the BS “string” videos some Fetus People made to entrap Planned Parenthood. Someone asked Hillary Clinton about them, and she fudged, calling the videos “disturbing.”

Fudging and not taking firm stands until she knows where the opinion polls are going are old tools in HRC’s toolbox, but she’s treading on unusually dangerous ground here. Her biggest fans are liberal/progressive middle- and upper-class white women who are not going to take kindly to the dissing of PP. Remember what happened to the Susan B. Komen Foundation?

I’m ambivalent about Clinton, but I always thought she could be counted on regarding feminist and reproductive rights issues. If she’s squishy on Planned Parenthood, that’s a big mark against her.

She also tap danced around a question about the Keystone XL Pipeline this morning. Not smart.

Elsewhere: The whole Internet and much of television is in an uproar over the gruesome shooting death of Cecil the Lion. In brief, Cecil was a famous and much loved lion of Zimbabwe who was lured out of a wildlife preserve and shot with an arrow by a dentist from Minnesota. The lion had to be tracked for 40 hours before the dentist and his “guides” could finish him off.

Now the dentist has closed his practice and gone into hiding, and fears for his life. Lots of people looked up personal information about him and published it on the Web, a practice I do not condone. But the public shaming is the least he deserves. I’m not opposed on principle to all hunting, even though I wouldn’t do it myself, but to me there’s something obscene and depraved about killing a beautiful, healthy animal for fun. If public shaming stops at least some big game hunting, I’m all for it. As long as nobody gets hurt.

There has been some grumbling about all the awful things going on in the world, and why are people getting their panties in a bunch over a lion. Maybe it’s because there are so many awful things going on in the world, that when some jerk for no good reason destroys a thing that was good, that made the world a little brighter, it’s too sad.

Elsewhere: See Steve M about the 17-year-old who died because a 911 dispatcher wouldn’t send help. The dispatcher was offended by the caller’s language, apparently.

Elsewhere: It’s damn hot in Brooklyn. I’ll cheer up when the temperature goes down.