The world was not waiting for The Wall Street Journal to weigh in on the Charleston, South Carolina, massacre. Yet in a steaming hot pile of take posted online Thursday evening, the newspaper's editorial board took a hard look at the killing of nine people at a historically black church and concluded that "what causes young men such as Dylann Roof to erupt in homicidal rage, whatever their motivation, is a problem that defies explanation."

In truth, evidence had been emerging all day of the racial hatred that drove the shooter.

Still, the editorial began by lamenting that race had even entered the discussion. For people who see such a motive, the board wrote, "It does not matter that the alleged killer, Dylann Roof, brings to mind the mentally troubled young men who committed horrific mass murders of innocents inside buildings in Newtown, Conn.; Aurora, Colo.; or Virginia Tech."

And why, the paper wondered, are people so focused on this one crime, "when individuals are murdered every day in less noted acts of hatred or rage that leave survivors bereft beyond understanding"?

After noting the parallels between the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, the editorial said that the nation has made great strides in discouraging this sort of racial violence over the past half-century.
Back then and before, the institutions of government -- police, courts, organized segregation -- often worked to protect perpetrators of racially motivated violence, rather than their victims.

The universal condemnation of the murders at the Emanuel AME Church and Dylann Roof’s quick capture by the combined efforts of local, state and federal police is a world away from what President Obama recalled as “a dark part of our history.” Today the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists.
The editorial board isn't completely wrong: Americans of all races were clearly horrified by the massacre on Wednesday night. And it's no small feat that police caught the accused murderer the day after he committed the crime. It took nearly 15 years to begin bringing the 16th Street Baptist Church bombers to justice and nearly four decades for the last two perpetrators to be convicted.

But does the fact that America has made some significant progress over the past 50 years really mean we've eliminated institutionalized racism? Even a cursory glance at the way our nation handles criminal justice, access to housing and education -- just to mention a few areas -- would suggest we have a seriously entrenched problem.

Only in a nation still blind to the ongoing legacy of our original sin could the bar for ending institutionalized inequality be set so low. And ironically, that one of the nation's leading media outlets chose to set the bar there, rather than confront the painful reality, is itself proof of the persistence of racism.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 2 days ago.

President Barack Obama opened his remarks to a room of mayors by describing another tragedy that has "become far too commonplace." 

"Racism remains a blight that we have to combat together," President Obama said at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in San Francisco on Friday. 

The Charleston shooting, as Obama described, left nine churchgoers dead after "congregates invited a stranger into their place of worship" who later turned on them. "We should be strong enough to acknowledge this," he said.

More than 11,000 people died from gun fire in 2013, the president noted, but Congress did not pass "commonsense" gun regulation after the 2012 attack in Newtown left 20 children dead. 

"No reform can guarantee the elimination of violence," Obama said. "But we might have some more Americans with us."

The crowd of 300 mayors, many of whom have had to comfort the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence, cheered loudly.

Obama spoke strongly about the need for conversation that doesn't politicize the issue or demonize gun owners. Despite the multiple mass shootings during Obama's tenure — Charleston, Aurora and Newtown are a few examples, the president said the public opinion on the issue still has to move, and people need to feel a sense of urgency before anything will change at the Congressional level. Obama cited gay marriage as one example.

"At some point, we have to reckon with what happens. It is not good enough simply to show sympathy," Obama said. "You do not see murder with this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency in any other advanced nation on earth. I refuse to act that this is the new normal or pretend that it’s simply sufficient to grieve." 

*SEE ALSO: The 2 key factors that explain why people like Dylann Roof commit violent hate crimes*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This haunting domestic violence ad will be the first of its kind to air during the Super Bowl Reported by Business Insider 2 days ago.

Testimony of the death of a 6-year-old concluded the prosecution’s case against Mr. Holmes, who could face the death penalty over a theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. Reported by NYTimes.com 2 days ago.

This week, Americans were shocked by another horrific act of mass murder. In Charleston, South Carolina, a young white man, infected by race hate, walked into the historic Emanuel AME Church, sat for an hour with their evening bible study group, and then took out a gun and murdered nine innocent African American congregants. Our national ailments of racism and gun violence had once again reared their ugly heads, waking us, if only for a moment, from our collective somnolence.

Because we have long ignored the persistence of these virulent diseases, their consequences continue to be felt. Our murder rate is the highest in the developed world and we lead in social strife, as well. In one index, for example, Canada is in 7th place while the US is in 94th!

The statistics are staggering. Last year, there were 16,000 criminal homicides in the US. Seventy percent of these murders were done were with guns. This is three times the number of lives lost in the entire Iraq war; 300 each week; more than 40 every day. Some are "crimes of passion", others are murders occurring during the commission of another crime. While they cry out for attention, they are largely ignored.

What does catch our attention are the mass shootings, especially the most dramatic of them. But, tragically, here, too, we suffer from willed memory loss. Within a few days after we were in front of our televisions, transfixed by these unfolding horrors, the names and faces of the victims and their killers have been forgotten. If anything, we remember the sites of the crimes: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Fort Hood, Aurora, Oak Creek, Newtown, and now Charleston.

Despite the magnitude of these crimes, the horror does not stay with us for long. Instead, they pass out of our consciousness and are recalled only when the next mass killing occurs.

The cities I mentioned were the sites of the big massacres. But the reality is that "mass shootings" (defined as a shooting incident in which four or more individuals are killed or wounded) are more commonplace than we are willing to admit. In the past two and one-half years, over one thousand Americans were murdered and more than 4000 were wounded in over 750 mass shootings. That's two mass shootings every three days, many of which would have been worse except for the fact that the killers only succeeded in wounding most of their victims.

When the US's murder rate and mass shooting rates are stacked up against the rest of the world, it becomes clear that we not only have a problem--we have a sickness--and it is killing us, literally. And yet we go from mass killing to mass killing, numb for a day, and then we move on.

In the immediate aftermath of each mass killing, political leaders pledge action to control weapons--their distribution and use. But then the powerful gun lobby strikes back; Members of Congress cower; and nothing happens.

The day after Charleston, a clearly distressed Barack Obama was in front of a White House podium speaking about our national ailments for the seventh time since he entered the Oval Office. In part, he said

"I've had to make statements like this too many times. Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times...let's be clear: at some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency.

"...it is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing that the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But..at some point, it's going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it".

The President went on the note that

"the fact that this took place in a black church obviously raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked, and we know that hatred across the races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals".

While some naively assumed that Obama's election would help America transcend its racial divide, it appears to have had the opposite effect. Coming as it did in the midst of the greatest economic collapse since the Depression, some alienated and traumatized white Americans recoiled at the sight of an African American entering the Oval Office. The reactions were measurable. Within the first year of Obama's presidency the number of white hate groups operating in the US increased by over 40%. And there was a dramatic spike in hate crimes against African Americans. Despite constituting less than 15% of the US population, the number of hate crimes against African Americans equal those committed against all other groups combined. And it was also this same set of circumstances that helped to spawn the Tea Party and the "birther movement"--with their subtle and not so subtle appeals to race.

Despite these continuing reminders that we have an enduring problem with race, here, too, we either ignore the problem or make an effort to deny its corrosive and pervasive influence on our lives. And we most often succeed in putting it away until the next tragic police shooting or hate crime slaps us awake.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre, I had an especially troubling thought. Compare, for a moment, the attention and resources we devote to "combating violent extremism" (by which we mean Muslims) with the lack of resources and attention we dedicate to what are our defining national diseases. Then imagine what the reaction in Congress would have been if the Charleston shooter had been a Muslim and his targets had been white. This too is a symptom of our ailment.

By any measure, racist hate groups and gun violence are the gravest threats we face today. And yet it appears to be easier for us to work up a lather over some Somali kids going off to join al Shabab or some Muslim converts making their way to join an extremist group in Syria. Of course we should we stop them. And of course we should we protect ourselves against any and all potential terrorist threats. But the fact that we can't muster the intelligence and resolve to stop ourselves from hating and killing each other, while we are riveted on the "Muslim bogeyman", only means that our twin diseases will remain with us eating away at the very soul of our nation.

Follow @AAIUSA for more.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 2 days ago.

A 2-year-old boy was ejected from his father's vehicle and the child's 5-year-old cousin was seriously injured in a collision in Aurora Saturday afternoon. Reported by Denver Post 23 hours ago.

WASHINGTON -- On the morning of December 14, 2012, as news trickled in painfully slowly about a shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut, aides gathered in the White House to chart out a response.

Moments of national crises require, at a basic political level, a prompt reaction, if only to demonstrate that the situation is being dealt with. And the president and his aides knew he'd have to deliver remarks as reports from Sandy Hook Elementary School grew worse.

President Barack Obama's speechwriter, Jon Favreau, came in at one point to hand Obama the draft of the speech he'd deliver to press corps waiting in the nearby James Brady Briefing Room, named after Ronald Reagan's press secretary who had himself been a victim of gun violence.

"He barely looked up from his desk and couldn't even look at me because there were tears in his eyes," Favreau recalled on Friday.

Twenty kids were dead along with six educators in Newtown, Connecticut. And even though the president occupied the most powerful political perch in the country, there was a sense of helplessness in the room. After talking with Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy and FBI Director Robert Mueller, a draft was finalized. Obama walked into the briefing room at 3:15 p.m.

"I know there is not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do," he said, speaking in measured tones, staring down carefully to the written text and pausing occasionally to gather himself and wipe tears from his eyes.

"Our hearts are broken today."
This was the emotional nadir of Obama's presidency. Later, he would email his longtime aide David Axelrod to say that it had been the first time where he had cried in the Oval Office.

Though no incident would match the despair of Newtown, this wouldn't be the last time Obama would have to address a nation grappling with wanton gun violence. On Thursday, the president made yet another appearance at the briefing room to respond to a mass killing, this time the shooting of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. By the count of Mark Knoller, the unofficial presidential data keeper at CBS Radio News, it was the 14th time in his presidency that has been placed in such a circumstance.

"At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries," Obama said Thursday. "It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it."

Those who have worked at the White House describe these moments as excruciatingly awful. At first, it is a torturous scramble for news from any source available, whether it be television, local officials or law enforcement.

"You just hope they have specific information that is less devastating," one former White House official put it. Once enough information is accumulated, it falls on someone to brief the president, which the official described as "probably the hardest thing you can do in the White House on any given day." (That particular task during Newtown fell on John Brennan, then the Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and now the director of the CIA).

The primary job for the president and his aides is to ensure that no faulty information gets made public and that all the right political levers are pulled. Throughout it all, there is a tremendous tug and pull taking place: the desire to react viscerally to the events unfolding bumps up against the demand to operate conservatively and with precision.

"It is a fog," said Ben LaBolt, Obama's former press hand on gun policy, among other issues, and the press secretary of his 2012 campaign. "You are trying to figure out the facts and the motive and how many people were injured."

For those who have to go before the cameras, the pressure to maintain this balance can be overwhelming. Obama's former press secretary, Jay Carney, said that the briefing he gave after Newtown was the hardest of his tenure.

"People think it was the one after Benghazi but it is not even close," he said.

Often, it is the president who bears this burden first. His job is to not just relay what is being done to respond to the violence but to offer a certain level of empathy, grief and even green shoots of hope for those affected or those just watching.

"The role of the president is many, but one is ministerial in times like this," said Axelrod. "Obviously you want to make sure that everything that should be done is being done and in cases like this they almost certainly are. The main function is to come out and articulate the nation's grief."

As the cases of gun-related mass killings have piled up during his time in office, Obama's approach to these moments has become -- disturbing as it may be to acknowledge -- more practiced; the routine more familiar.

"There is no question that, yeah, he has done this so many times that I don't think that when it comes to figuring out the right tone it is very complicated," said Carney.

You can see as much in watching Obama's responses to instances of gun violence through the years. The dry recounting of the events and calls for reflection and prayer that he displayed early in his administration have become peppered, increasingly, with visible emotions and calls for actions. More recently, they've featured laments, almost angry at times, that no action is taking place.

"He didn't become numb to it," said Favreau. "He became frustrated."

For Favreau, one memorable tipping point was the shooting of moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012. He recalled being with the president on a campaign swing at the time that the news broke.

"You don't have kids yet but being a parent is like having your heart outside of your body all the time," the president told him, Favreau recalled. He was cribbing from someone else. But also reacting to just how little information was known in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when parents were wondering if their child was among the 12 killed and 70 injured by the shooter, James Holmes.

Six months later, Newtown happened. Obama recited that line in the speech he delivered at the vigil.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 16 hours ago.

Testimony from a woman who became paralyzed and lost her daughter in the Aurora movie theater shooting closed the prosecution's case against James Holmes. Reported by CNN.com 9 hours ago.

When you're the President of the United States, you're surrounded at all times -- by aides, by press, by Secret Service, by crowds. It's a bubble that's hard to escape.

That's what makes the people with whom you surround yourself in those rare private moments all the more important.

It just so happens that I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by women. They're the most important people in my life. They're the people who've shaped me the most. And in this job, they are my sanctuary.

People often ask me whether being President has made it more difficult to spend time with Michelle and our girls. But the surprising truth is that being in the White House has made our family life more "normal" than it's ever been.Photo credit: Official White House photo by Samantha AppletonWhen Malia was born, Michelle and I were fortunate enough to spend a blissful three months mostly at home with our baby girl. But then Michelle went back to work part time, and I returned to my schedule of teaching at the University of Chicago law school and serving in the state legislature. This meant that I would often be away in Springfield for three days at a time. Even when I was home in Chicago, I had papers to grade and briefs to write and evening meetings to attend.

As professionals, we were blessed with the resources for things like reliable child care and takeout when we were too exhausted to cook. Our jobs afforded us the kind of flexibility that many working families simply don't have. Still, we each had a truckload of student debt, which meant that when we got married, we got poorer together. So we were counting every penny to manage our household bills, pay our student loans and maintain a full-time babysitter. The combined pressures sometimes put a real strain on our marriage, as they do for many working parents with young kids. After Sasha was born, Michelle was working while juggling our home life. I helped out, and I saw myself as a pretty enlightened guy. But the truth was, I helped on my terms and on my schedule, and the expectations and the burden disproportionately -- and unfairly -- fell on Michelle, as happens to many women.

Fortunately, we had the help of my wonderful mother-in-law, Marian, who lived just a few minutes away. Still, Michelle was understandably stressed and frustrated, and I suspect she felt a little like a single mom sometimes. Things didn't get any easier when I was elected to the Senate and had to commute back and forth to Washington every week. Then our lives were thrown completely out of balance during a presidential campaign that kept me on the road almost constantly -- leaving Michelle to carry an even heavier load for longer stretches of time.

That's why I call her the rock of our family -- because she is. She always has been.

Photo credit: Michelle Obama/InstagramStill, we didn't know what to expect when I became President. We knew I might have even less time for our family. We knew that uprooting Malia and Sasha from their friends and school and community in Chicago would be challenging. So for good measure, we brought Marian with us to ease the transition and to be with them when Michelle and I couldn't.

But to our surprise, moving to the White House was really the first time since the girls were born that we've been able to gather as a family almost every night. Michelle and I can go to parent-teacher conferences together. I've been able to make Malia's tennis matches and Sasha's dance recitals. Sasha let me help coach her basketball team -- the Vipers. They won the title. I've even ex-perienced what all dads dread: watching my daughter go to her first prom. In high heels.

So it's not always easy being a father of teenage girls. But it is pretty good to liveabove the store.

Photo credit: Chicago Tribune photo by Pete SouzaEven with our jam-packed days, Michelle and I work hard to carve out certain blocks of family time that are sacrosanct. For example, at 6:30 p.m., no matter how busy I am, I leave work to go upstairs and have dinner with my family. That's inviolable. My staff knows that it pretty much takes a national emergency to keep me away from that dinner table. As a night owl, I'd rather stay up late reading briefings and working on speeches after everybody has gone to bed anyway.

So for an hour or so at dinner, my focus is not on my day, but on theirs. I ask Sasha and Malia the usual annoying parental questions: How was school? What are your friends up to? Have you done your homework? What are you thinking about? In return, they spend a lot of time teasing me about my big ears or stodgy suits -- and Michelle is always happy to join them.

Now they're at an age when they're well-informed, so they often ask me questions about issues. Like a lot of young people, for instance, they're deeply interested in the environment. Like most in their gener-ation, they take it for granted that people shouldn't be treated differently because of their gender or race or sexual orientation or disability. They have every expectation that they and young women just like them can grow up to be anything they want to be. The highlight of my day is just listening to their thoughts about the world and seeing what smart, funny, kind young women they've become. That hour recharges me and gives me perspective. And those moments where I can just be Dad -- even if it's "Daaaaaaad" -- well, there's nothing better.

Photo credit: Callie Shell/Aurora photosMichelle does her best to preserve that time, and it has made a huge difference. Like I said, she's our rock. Whatever comes up, I know that they'll be there for me. And I will always be there for them. These days, the girls occasionally miss a night because they're so busy with school and activities. And like many parents of high school juniors who are excitedly touring college campuses, I'm already dreading that empty seat at the table when Malia goes off to school next fall. I can feel myself lingering at the table a little longer, trying to stave off the passage of time. But for as long as possible, I'm going to enjoy every minute of finally having us all together under one roof.

First Lady Nancy Reagan once wrote, "Nothing can prepare you for living in the White House." She was right, of course. Nothing can prepare you. But your family can sustain you.

This post originally appeared on More.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 7 hours ago.

Elle Fanning dons a cute beret while on the set of her new photo shoot in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon (June 18). The 17-year-old actress got the giggles over a couple of young boy scouts who were involved in the shot, before changing into a different look. PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of [...] Reported by Just Jared Jr 6 hours ago.

*Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com*
Consider this paragraph a holding action on the subject of getting blown away in America. While I write this dispatch, I’m waiting patiently for the next set of dispiriting killings in this country. And I have faith. Before I’m done, some angry -- or simply mentally disturbed -- and well-armed American “lone wolf” (or lone wolves) will gun down someone (or a number of people) somewhere and possibly himself (or themselves) as well. Count on that. It’ll be my last paragraph. Think of it as, in a grim way, something to look forward to as you read this piece on American armed mayhem. 

National security officials and politicians have been pounding home the message that the “greatest threat” to Americans is an extreme and brutal jihadist movement thousands of miles away and the videos and social media messages its followers produce that make it seem close at hand. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few of the dangers of armed life in these United States, a quick survey of national insecurity in a country armed to the teeth.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that, in the first half of 2015, there’s been a plethora of incidents to draw on. There’s the killer still on the loose in northern Colorado who shot at people in cars or out biking or walking late at night. There’s the suspected serial killer who dumped seven bodies behind a strip mall in New Britain, Connecticut, and may now be in jail on unrelated charges. There’s the ongoing trial of James Holmes who blew away 12 moviegoers and wounded 70 in a multiplex in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012. There was the mass killing of seven people in February in the tiny town of Tyrone, Missouri, by Joseph Aldridge, an armed recluse who then killed himself. And don’t forget Sudheer Khamitkar, who shot to death his wife and two young sons and then himself in Tulsa in April, or Christopher Carrillo, who murdered four of his family members and then turned his gun on himself in a Tucson home in May. And many others.

In such a list, there should be a special place for a phenomenon that, though largely untabulated, has been gaining attention in recent years as ever more Americans “carry” in ever more places.  This means ever more loose guns lying around.  I’m talking about the mayhem committed by toddlers (or perhaps they should be thought of as American lone wolf cubs).  Toddler shootings range from the two year old who killed his mother in a Walmart in Idaho with the gun she was packing in her purse as 2014 ended to the three year old who discovered a gun in a purse in an Albuquerque motel room in February and wounded his father and pregnant mother with a single shot.  Such a list for this year would have to include the Florida two year old who found his father’s gun in the family car and killed himself with it in January, the three year old who picked up an unattended gun and killed a one year old in a Cleveland home in April, the Virginia two year old who found a gun on top of a dresser and killed himself in late May, and the four year old who, at about the same time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, picked up a shotgun at a target shooting range and killed his 22-year-old uncle. Toddler killings have been commonplace enough in these pistol-packin’ years that they now significantly outpace terror killings in the U.S.

*The Big Leagues of Violence*

While we’re at it (before we get to the really big stuff), there is the crew I think of as American-style suicide killers. They lack a political or religious ideology like the suicide bombers of the Middle East, but they are on missions for which killing yourself as well as others is the imagined end. Think of them as informal American jihadis, in touch with no ISIS social media types, watching no inflammatory terror videos, but all riled up anyway, often deeply disturbed, armed, and on suicide missions in the American homeland.

I’m referring to a remarkably commonplace kind of killing that, as far as I know, no one has taken the time to record or count up: men who kill their girlfriends or wives (and sometimes others in the vicinity) and then take their own lives.  Here’s an almost random list of just some of the reported cases I stumbled across for 2015: In January, in the appropriately named Nutley, New Jersey, a 38-year-old man shot his 37-year-old girlfriend and then killed himself; in January, in Lincoln, Nebraska, a 49-year-old man shot his 44-year-old girlfriend, called the police to report the killing, and then killed himself; also in January, a 29-year-old man shot his 27-year-old pregnant girlfriend six or seven times in a hotel for the homeless in New York City’s Times Square before taking his own life; in February, in Wading River, New York, a 44-year-old man shot and killed his 43-year-old girlfriend and her 17-year-old daughter before taking his own life; in March, in Chicago, a 23-year-old man shot and killed his 24-year-old girlfriend, then himself in the mouth, committing suicide; in April, a 48-year-old Fort Worth man, who had a winning $500 lottery ticket and refused to share the spoils with his 46-year-old girlfriend, shot her and then himself after they argued, then called the police to report the crime before dying; in April, in Cleveland, a 48-year-old man shot and killed his 19-year-old girlfriend and then repeated the act two doors down, murdering his 47-year-old ex-wife, before turning his gun on himself; also in April in Montgomery, Alabama, a man shot and killed his girlfriend, subsequently killing himself; similarly in April, a 35-year-old doctor shot and killed his 39-year-old girlfriend in Fayetteville, North Carolina, followed by a 32-year-old doctor in New Jersey, and then, when police approached him, committed suicide; in May, in San Diego, a 52-year-old man shot his 28-year-old girlfriend and her 63-year-old mother to death before committing suicide.  As June began, in Cleveland, a 30-year-old man shot and killed his 24-year-old ex-girlfriend and her grandfather, badly injuring her grandmother, then killed himself.  And so it goes, and mind you, this is just a starter list for such acts, which seem remarkably commonplace.

Moving on to bigger things, one kind of killing has been much in the news of late: police shootings.  The figures the FBI has traditionally compiled on them have proven to be way too low, so others have entered the fray.  The Washington Post, for instance, recently began compiling a database of “every fatal shooting by police” in the U.S. in 2015 (deaths* *by Taser not included). Their figure so far: at least 385 for the first five months of 2015 or approximately one of every 13 non-suicide gun deaths so far this year.

“About half the victims,” the Post reports, “were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.”  A Guardian study adds this detail: “Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when killed during encounters with police as white people.”

According to the Guardian, a recent Bureau of Justice report found that over the last eight years an average of 928 Americans have died annually at the hands of the police.  (FBI figures: only 383.)  In other words in those years, there were 7,427 police homicides, the equivalent of more than two 9/11s.  Compared to other developed countries, these figures are staggering. There were, for instance, more fatal police shootings in the United States in the month of March 2015 (97) than Australia had between 1992 and 2011 (94).  Similarly, there have been almost three times as many police shootings in California alone in 2015 (72) as Canada experiences annually (25).

And when it comes to armed dangers in a country in which there are estimated to be between 270 and 310 million guns or, on average, nearly one firearm for every man, woman, and child, we haven’t even made it to the major leagues of death yet.  Take, for instance, suicide by gun.  In the last year for which we have figures, 2013, there were 21,175 such deaths and they seem to be rising.  Deaths by firearm in this country totaled 33,636 in that year and seem to be rising as well.

And just for the heck of it, maybe we should throw in one other kind of weapon (even if it generally lacks the intentionality of firearms): cars, trucks, and other vehicles.  Many traffic deaths could certainly qualify as assaults, however unintentional, with a deadly weapon.  In 2013, there were 32,719 such deaths, essentially equaling death by gun in America.

In all, then, we’re talking about approximately 66,000 death-dealing assaults with weapons or vehicles in this country yearly.

*Armed Dangers and Meal Tickets*

Now, let’s leave those annual fields of carnage behind and turn to the “greatest threat” of our moment -- or so the officials of the national security state would have you believe.  You know what that is, of course: the Islamic State with its sophisticated propaganda skills that, according to official Washington, regularly run circles around whatever this country and its allies can muster in response.  Despite the nearly trillion dollars a year that goes into national security and the elaborate surveillance and monitoring systems that have been put in place, we remain strangely defenseless against its wiles.  Using social media, its facilitators threaten to obliterate distance, reach across oceans, and rile up displaced, marginalized, and often slightly unhinged young American Muslims, and -- at least so the story goes -- prepare the groundwork for unparalleled mayhem in “the homeland.”

With that dire scenario in mind, here is 2015 in Islamic State terrorism in the U.S. in terms of death and destruction: In May, evidently affected by ISIS’s social media presence, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, two young American Muslims from Phoenix who were roommates, set out to attack a cartoon exhibit and contest in Garland, Texas, devoted to the Prophet Muhammad and organized by Islamophobe Pam Geller.  Armed with assault rifles and wearing body armor, they managed to wound an unarmed security guard in the ankle before they were killed by an off-duty traffic officer, also working security at the event.

Similarly, this month a 26-year-old black Muslim, Usaamah Rahim, was reportedly involved in an ISIS-inspired plot in Boston to somehow behead Geller.  He then supposedly abandoned that plan, deciding instead to behead some local “boys in blue.”  Approached on the street for questioning by Boston police and FBI agents in plain clothes, he pulled out a “military-style knife,” they claimed, threatened them, and was shot to death.  (Some aspects of their account have been questioned.)  And that’s it, folks.  The greatest threat on the planet has, so far this year, managed to inspire three marginal young men to get themselves killed.  When it comes to the dangers in American life, put that in the context of tens of thousands of annual deaths by firearm, or even of the toddler killings.

Despite all the talk of possible jihadist plots, this is the evidence we have of the threat to the “homeland” which the Islamic State represents at the moment and into which so much money and preventive activity flows (to the exclusion of so much else).  It is, we are told, a “new threat,” utterly unlike the normal dangers of our American world.  In fact, such violence, rare as it may be, shouldn’t seem aberrational at all.  It really should strike us as more of the same -- even if the names of the perpetrators sometimes have a different ring to them: men, often young, with access to weapons, in some cases mentally unstable, and with a grudge, intent on striking out.  They should remind us of those American men who so regularly kill their girlfriends and then themselves or of many of the mass killers of recent years.

Yet this is the lone danger that is constantly played up as the one worthy of both fear and investment.  Of course, jihadist terror is perfectly real and if Americans lived in Syria or Iraq or Libya it would be a horrifying problem.  But whatever the present skills of ISIS’s propagandists, such violence has, since 9/11, proven more dangerous than shark attacks, but not much else in American life.  And when law enforcement agencies are surveyed, according to Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, they, too, see the dangers of Islamist terrorism as modest indeed in this country, particularly in comparison to the homegrown far right-wing version of the same.

It matters that we are still protected by two oceans and that the Islamic jihadist heartlands are distant indeed.  But let’s be honest: the threat of Islamic terrorism here is also a meal ticket for the national security state.  (Hence all those plots that turn out to be essentially instigated, funded, often essentially organized by FBI informers and then “cracked” by the FBI.)  It’s one major way that the officials of that state-within-a-state ensure support and funding, endow themselves with special privileges, including never having to appear in* *court for potential criminal acts, and entrench their anti-democratic methods and the blanket of secrecy that goes with them ever more deeply in American life.

As for the real armed dangers in our world, nobody’s likely to put much money into protecting you from them and, despite those 66,000 deaths a year, somehow the world continues to spin and the end is not nigh.

By the way, you do have one thing coming to you, don’t you?  I promised you a last paragraph.  So here goes.

In the week-plus since I first began writing this piece, there was indeed one Islamic State-"inspired" attack in the United States.  A twenty-one year old man lunged at an FBI agent searching his home in Staten Island, New York, with "a large kitchen knife."  He was reputed to be part of another of those ISIS-inspired terror "plots" that seem unlikely to ever be successfully carried out.  There was also a mass killing.  A twenty-one-year-old white racist walked into a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and opened fire in what, if he had been Muslim, would have been called a terror attack, killing nine, including the church's pastor who was also a state senator.  As Reuters reported, the massacre "recalled the 1963 bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1960s."  There was as well at least one more grim toddler shooting.  A Cincinnati three year old found his mother’s gun in her purse, shot himself in the chest, and died.  There was also at least one more fellow on a suicide mission: a Vermont man sought by the police in the killing of his ex-girlfriend engaged in a high-speed car chase before crashing and committing suicide by gun.  There were a number of police homicides, including: a man on probation in a Hacienda Inn in South Lake Tahoe; a 28-year-old man in a high-speed car chase in Stockton, California; a 28-year-old man, unarmed but "behaving erratically," in Des Moines, Iowa; a man who stabbed a policeman trying to arrest him in Brighton Beach, New York; and a man tentatively identified as African in Louisville, Kentucky, accused of violently threatening the police with a flag pole (with the usual conflicting stories from police and eyewitnesses about what actually happened).  And in the smorgasbord that is America’s cavalcade of violence, we shouldn’t leave out the off-duty Neptune, New Jersey, police sergeant who chased his ex-wife in his car, caught up with her, and shot her to death in front of their seven-year-old daughter before threatening to kill himself and being arrested by the police; or the Iowa City mall security guard, evidently fired from his job earlier that day, who went home, got a weapon, returned, and killed a 20-year-old female employee of the mall’s children’s museum whom he had previously been harassing.  He fled, but was arrested by the police soon after.  Meanwhile, a mentally disturbed young man with a grudge against the police bought an armored van on eBay ("touted as a 'Zombie apocalypse assault vehicle' with 'gun ports' capable of 'drive-by mow-downs' and full armor and bulletproof windows 'just in case someone might try to take this bad boy from you'").  He then built pipe bombs, armed himself with an assault rifle and shotgun, drove to Police Headquarters in Dallas, and launched a full-scale attack on the place.  Miraculously, he managed to kill no one, despite also crashing his van into several police cars, and was finally killed by a police sniper.  And last but hardly least, some gunfire hit closer to home.  Three young men in Brooklyn, New York, were shot and wounded in a housing-project playground complex (named after a neighborhood 13 year old who had been killed by a policeman in 1994).  Someone I know gives classes in that complex.  The shooter remains on the loose.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.  

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 14 hours ago.

Patch Montgomery, IL -- The crash occurred at 4:56 a.m. June 17. Reported by Patch 10 hours ago.

Three bursts of super-hot solar plasma are meeting up in space today, and it could create some brilliant auroras for people on Earth.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) is predicting that these three coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, could create a strong geomagnetic storm that may produce auroras as far south as the Canadian border with the U.S. border.

See also: 9 Stunning Images of the Aurora Borealis Over the U.S.

Internationally, northern Europe, including Scandinavia, Russia, Iceland and Alaska are likely to see above average aurora activity on Monday night, the SWPC says, although predicting the exact interaction between CMEs and the Earth's magnetic field can be tricky. Read more...

More about Us World, Us, Space, Climate, and Space Weather Reported by Mashable 9 hours ago.

CENTENNIAL — There were days when police officers wept on the witness stand and days when autopsy photographs lingered before jurors, but the toughest days so far in the Aurora movie Reported by Denver Post 10 hours ago.

A solar storm is in the process of battering the Earth, after numerous solar flares erupted from a highly active sunspot over the last few days. Reported by msnbc.com 2 hours ago.

Astronaut Scott Kelley tweeted a picture of a red aurora, a high intensity solar storm surrounding planet Earth. CBSN's Vladimir Duthiers and Kristine Johnson have the stellar shot. Reported by CBS News 46 minutes ago.

After Virginia Tech, people arguing for gun control said that the worst of it was that it would happen again, and after Aurora they said that it would happen again, and then after Newtown they said the same thing. Now, after Charleston, we’re saying it yet again. There is no victory or happiness in getting that call right. The worst of it, put another way, is that mini-massacres that would, in any normal country, themselves be subjects of horror have been moved down the scale of monstrosity. Fewer than seven or eight people dead, and it hardly registers anymore—the six-person gun massacre is merely another multiple murder. Reported by The New Yorker 1 day ago.

Marcus Weaver's wife Megan gave birth to their daughter in the car on the way to the hospital. KUSA's Steve Staeger reports. Reported by msnbc.com 23 hours ago.

By Gerri Detweiler, Credit.com
What would you do with an extra $50 to $250 a month? Pay off credit card debt? Build an emergency savings fund? Take a much-needed vacation? There's a good chance you are throwing away that much money month after month, and if you stop, you'll be able to put it to better use.You just need to stop wasting so much food.Laura McElfresh from Aurora Colorado, has learned firsthand how the savings can add up. With seven children ages 3-21, the $800 to $900 the family used to spend each month on food didn't seem unreasonable, but it was putting a strain on the family budget. McElfresh says she planned meals, used coupons and thought she was doing pretty well. She remembers reading that Americans throw away about 25 percent of their food, and thought "no way."But in 2012, after the holidays, she had an epiphany. "I remember the week after New Year's going through the fridge and throwing away a kitchen-sized trash bag of food," she says. She realized that throwing away a quarter of her food meant she was wasting $255 a month, or $2,700 a year. "My grandmother, who survived the Depression with her family of six small children, would have rolled over in her grave if she knew what I'd done," she said.She resolved to change.First, she got creative. "Grandma rarely had a recipe," she says. "She used what was fresh from the garden, what was already in the house, and her meals were sort of a smorgasbord of bits and pieces from what was in the fridge. The ham she cooked, half a jar of home-canned peaches, bread from the morning, leftover green beans, whatever she had on hand. And no matter how many people there were at her table, there was always enough."McElfresh says she realized that if she started serving more side dishes like her grandmother did, the main dish would go further, and there would be another bonus: It would encourage everyone to eat more veggies and sides.
*A Recipe for Savings*
McElresh has a "go to" meal she calls "Stuff in a Pan" that she says is a great way to use up whatever is on hand.Start with meat -- ham, chicken, sausage etc. (For her large family, she uses two pounds of meat.) Add potatoes or veggies such as zucchini or spaghetti squash. Then throw in seasonings and condiments you find in your fridge such as onion, garlic, leftover corn or green beans, cheese, olives, "that carrot that needs to be used up in the back of the fridge," etc. One version she calls "Stuff Italiano" can be made with spaghetti sauce, or a Mexican version can be made with taco meat and salsa.
*Turn 'Trash' Into Meals*
McElresh now makes it a habit to freeze and label leftovers, even when the amounts are small. "It seems silly when you start doing it, but I'm always amazed at how many great meals come out of what would be trash," she says. For example, if there is a leftover pork chop or bit of pork roast, she will freeze it. Over time, she'll have enough to warm up with barbecue sauce for sandwiches. "I take it as a personal challenge to see what I can make out of 'trash' at our house!" she says.She also recommends a periodic "freezer challenge." For one week, the goal is to use what is in the freezer. She might buy essentials like milk, eggs, butter or snacks, but as much as possible she tries to use what she already has on hand. She says she searched the Internet -- "What can I make with frozen broccoli?" -- until she came up with tried-and-true recipes, many of which she shares on her blog.
*Clean Out Your Fridge*
Experts often recommend rotating food in the fridge and pantry so that older food is front and center, where it is most likely to be used, and McElfresh agrees it is essential. "I learned quickly that I absolutely had to clean out the fridge every three to five days in order for this to work," she says. "I rotate food to the front of the fridge that needs to be used most quickly and tuck the stuff that lasts longer back to the back. Cut up produce that is looking sad and put it out at snack time." She says tackling this chore more frequently means less time and waste than if she waited longer. "And I have less guilt knowing that my money is feeding us, not the landfill," she says.
*Bring Less Home *
Learning not to buy things she didn't need was her most important lesson, she says. When she started paying attention to things she was throwing away she found recurring themes: fresh fruit, leftover meals, side dishes and "always the celery and carrots (that) would get slimy in the back of the vegetable drawer... and big bags of precut lettuce."So, for example, she stopped buying fresh celery unless she knew she needed it for a specific recipe. The rest was immediately chopped, frozen and ready for a cooked dish. She says she buys heads of romaine lettuce now instead of the bags of cut-up salad mix. "It lasts forever in the fridge," she says. Although prepping it is a little more work she says she doesn't wind up wasting it or making another trip to the store because she needs some lettuce for tacos.McElfresh's efforts paid off big time. She was able to feed her large family on $400 to $500 a month, a savings of $400 or more a month, which adds up to roughly $4,800 a year. She says, "In the end, I learned I really didn't need to spend so much if I just use what I already have and buy less."Image courtesy of Laura McElfresh.-More from Credit.com-

· How to Save Big Without Feeling Deprived· The Lifetime Cost of Debt Calculator· 5 Habits of Successful Savers· 5 Steps to Get Control of Your FinancesThis article originally appeared on Credit.com.

*About the author:* Gerri Detweiler is Credit.com's Director of Consumer Education. She focuses on helping people understand their credit and debt, and writes about those issues, as well as financial legislation, budgeting, debt recovery and savings strategies. She is also the co-author of Debt Collection Answers: How to Use Debt Collection Laws to Protect Your Rights, and Reduce Stress: Real-Life Solutions for Solving Your Credit Crisis as well as host of TalkCreditRadio.com. More by Gerri Detweiler.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 22 hours ago.

By Christine DiGangi, Credit.com
Buying a home is so much more than finding the perfect place, applying for a home loan and budgeting for a monthly mortgage payment -- it's thousands of dollars more than many homeowners expect. American homeowners pay about $9,500 annually in unexpected home expenses, according to an analysis by real estate company Zillow and Thumbtack, a company that helps consumers find service providers.The bulk of those expenses come from necessary bills, like property taxes and insurance -- things all homeowners need to deal with but many forget to factor into their expenses when determining what they can afford in a new home. On top of that, many consumers find themselves unprepared for the cost of home maintenance, particularly if the home is very different from where they've previously lived, either in structure or location."Homebuyers too often fixate on the sticker price or monthly mortgage payment on a house, and don't budget for the other expenses associated with ownership -- which can add up quickly," said Amy Bohutinsky, Zillow chief marketing officer, in a news release about the analysis. "For example, new buyers can get really excited about having a backyard of their own for the first time, without budgeting for how they plan to maintain that space."These so-called hidden costs vary by location, but nationally, they average $9,477 annually. To arrive at that figure, Zillow analyzed data like property taxes and insurance, and Thumbtack assessed service costs for five common maintenance costs homeowners hire professionals to complete, like carpet cleaning and yard work. The companies also looked at the costs in 15 large metropolitan statistical areas. Here's how the costs vary in some of the most populated areas of the country.15. Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, Ariz.
Annual unexpected homeowner expenses: $7,55014. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.
$8,04313. Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, Colo.
$8,14612. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.
$8,78911. Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, N.C.-S.C.
$8,86510. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minn.-Wis.
$9,7829. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla.
$10,1008. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.
$10,6477. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore.-Wash.
$10,6726. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Calif.
$11,3335. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.
$11,5494. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Pa.-N.J.-Del.-Md.
$11,9533. Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, Ill.-Ind.-Wis.
$12,2362. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.
$13,2871. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Mass.-N.H.
$13,930Determining how much house you can afford is only one of many things you need to figure out financially when buying a house. A large down payment and high credit score will help you access the best interest rates on a home loan, but don't forget to shop around for estimates on other expenses as well, so you are prepared to handle the full cost of your new place. (You can check your credit scores for free on Credit.com.) Without proper planning, you may find yourself in a challenging financial situation that could jeopardize your ability to pay for your house or make other important payments, which could cause credit damage and long-term harm to your finances.-More from Credit.com-

· How Much House Can You Afford?· Why You Shuld Check Your Credit Before Buying a Home· How to Determine Your Monthly Housing BudgetThis article originally appeared on Credit.com.

*About the author:* Christine DiGangi covers personal finance for Credit.com. Previously, she managed communications for the Society of Professional Journalists, served as a copy editor of The New York Times News Service and worked as a reporter for the Oregonian and the News & Record. More by Christine DiGangi.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 21 hours ago.

It's show time — again

Just three months after Australians were given a spectacular light show by Aurora Australis, it's happened again.

On Tuesday morning, people were treated to a show of nature normally reserved for those much further south. Off the coasts of Australia — from Perth to Sydney — the Southern Lights could be seen at daybreak, while New Zealand also got a fine show

See also: 'Severe' solar storm hits Earth, likely to spark auroras Monday night

Its sister phenomenon — known as Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights — was also expected to occur in parts of the northern hemisphere Tuesday morning, in places far from its regular home of the Arctic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center had advised Aurora watchers in the northern U.S. states to be on alert from Monday night through to Tuesday morning. Read more...

More about Australia, Northern Lights, Watercooler, Pics, and Space Reported by Mashable 19 hours ago.