Brian Cahn via ZUMA

At the risk of sounding a little too Kevin Drummish, everyone should settle down about Jon Ossoff’s loss last night. Also all the other Democratic losses recently. They just don’t tell us very much.

On the one hand, Democrats did a lot better than they had recently. On the other hand, parties always do better in open seats than they do running against incumbents. The “swings” of +20 or +15 or whatever are nice to see, but they don’t mean a whole lot.

It’s also way too early to draw any conclusions anyway. Keep in mind that Republicans haven’t even done anything yet. Twelve months from now, who knows what they will have accomplished? Passed a suicidal health care bill? A huge tax cut for the rich? Gotten us into a two-front war in the Middle East? Withdrawn from NATO? Declared that lead is healthy and mandated that it be put back in gasoline? Who the hell knows?

If Democrats want to win, they just need to do all the usual stuff. Find good candidates. Create an effective message. Close the character assassination gap. Raise lots of money. In other words, all the things they’d do if Hillary Clinton were president instead of Donald Trump.

Oh, and stop sniping at each other. Every district will require a different kind of candidate. Moderates for red places, liberals for purple places, Bernie-approved lefties for blue places. It’s all good.

Jeff Malet/Newscom via ZUMA

I promise you I’m not making this up:

The State Department has opened a formal inquiry into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while she was the nation’s top diplomat….Depending on the outcome of the current State Department inquiry, Clinton and her aides could have their access to sensitive government documents terminated.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, confirmed to Fox News the department’s formal inquiry. Meanwhile, Grassley’s committee launched its own inquiry into Clinton’s handling of emails, an inquiry that began in March.

Note to Republicans: Hillary lost. She will never run for anything again. And you didn’t just beat her. You beat her in the most humiliating way possible: on the back of a jaw-droppingly unqualified and emotionally unstable former reality-TV star who now occupies the Oval Office and spends his days tweeting bitterly about his latest imagined slights. Isn’t that enough? Is there truly nothing that will sate your unholy obsession with Bill and Hillary Clinton?

On the bright side, I guess we finally have evidence of at least one thing that Rex Tillerson has accomplished in the past few months.

Dave Weigel was in town a couple of weeks ago and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Weigel: I think Jon Ossoff has a real chance.
Me: Nah.
Weigel: Why do you say that?
Me: It’s Georgia.

It seems like I’ve heard about a hundred times in the last decade that Georgia would somehow turn blue. Maybe the whole state, maybe a single district, maybe something to do with the legislature. But it never happens. It has a Republican governor, two Republican senators, 10 (out of 14) Republican members of Congress, a heavily Republican state Senate, and a heavily Republican state House. I predict that it will keep disappointing Democrats for years to come.

I don’t know what to say about this. Philando Castile had been pulled over because he and his girlfriend “looked like” people who had been involved in a robbery. Nevertheless, for the first minute it’s an ordinary traffic stop, with both officers able to get a good look at Castile and his girlfriend. Then Castile tells one of the two officers that he has a gun in the car:

Castile, calmly: Sir, I have to tell you I do have a firearm on me.

Officer, calmly: Okay, don’t reach for it then.

Officer loosens gun and pulls it halfway out of its holster.

Castile, calmly: I’m, I, I was reaching for…

Officer, deliberately: Don’t pull it out.

Castile, calmly: I’m not pulling it out.

Girlfriend: He’s not…

Officer, panicky: Don’t pull it out!

Officer fires seven gunshots in two seconds.

Officer, panicky, nearly in tears: Don’t pull it out. Don’t move. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Don’t move. Don’t move.

I’m not a cop. I don’t know what it’s like to be a cop. But it’s hard to believe this had to happen. It’s dusk, so there’s enough light to see by. The other officer on the scene is calm the entire time, with his hands up around his chest. He doesn’t seem to think Castile presents any threat. And even if the first officer was being overly cautious, surely having his gun drawn and ready to fire was sufficient. Nothing in this scene makes it look like he had a good reason to fire when he did.

Pres. Trump on death of Otto Warmbier: “It’s a disgrace…if he were brought home sooner, I think the result would have been a lot different” pic.twitter.com/0LXjjDzXPC

— ABC News (@ABC) June 20, 2017

Let’s see. So far President Obama has (a) wiretapped Trump, (b) deliberately planned the destruction of Obamacare for 2017, (c) caused the Mike Flynn debacle by failing to properly vet Flynn,¹ (d) personally organized anti-Trump protests around the country, and (e) caused the death of Otto Warmbier because he was too weak-kneed to stand up to North Korea.

It’s standard practice for new presidents to declare that “things are even worse than I thought,” usually offered up as an excuse for why the country hasn’t blossomed under new leadership within the first month.² It’s also standard to attack your predecessor’s policies. But it’s decidedly not standard to accuse your predecessor personally of illegal, unethical, and cowardly acts.

I suppose Obama will continue to stay quiet about this, partly because it’s tradition, partly because that’s who he is, and partly because speaking up might be counterproductive at the moment. But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who wishes he’d toss tradition aside and just lay into Trump. I’d pay to see it.

¹For the record, Flynn was fired by Obama in 2014 because he had become deranged. Obama personally warned Trump about this.

²Also newly elected governors, mayors, district attorneys, sheriffs, dogcatchers, and PTA presidents.

The latest from our president:

While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2017

It’s pretty obvious to everyone except Trump that China did not, in fact, try. They were just playing Trump for a patsy.

Here’s the score so far: Trump has been suckered by China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. He has pissed off Mexico, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Australia, and most of our other traditional allies. Nobody knows what his policy toward Israel is. Or his policy in Afghanistan. Or his policy in Syria. Or his trade policy toward anyone. Or whether he ever bothers talking with his Secretary of State.

Welcome to our new foreign policy, ladies and gentlemen. Isn’t it great that we finally have a firm leader at the helm once again?

One of the beautiful people cycling and texting at Santa Monica beach shortly before sunset.

The latest from the State Department:

State spox: “The more time goes by, the more that doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia & the UAE” https://t.co/1rf5zH3hAW

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) June 20, 2017

Oops. I think that Heather Nauert forgot to read a piece of her script. Let me fix it:

Now that it’s been more than two weeks since the embargo started, we are mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the public nor to the Qataris the details about the claims that they are making toward Qatar. The more time that goes by since President Trump incited this action that was apparently based on no evidence, the more doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and President Trump.

Better?

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal

The opioid epidemic is not like other drug fads, which are primarily limited to the young. Here’s a chart from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality:

Emergency room visits among the young (purple line) are much higher than among senior citizens (light blue line), but both are skyrocketing at about equal rates. Among the young, emergency room visits have increased 109 percent since 2005. Among senior citizens, visits have increased 112 percent. This is an equal opportunity destroyer of lives, possibly because it’s our first-ever drug epidemic with corporate backing and big marketing budgets.

Sure, computers can win a game of chess or do your accounting. But they’ll never have the social skills of—

Feeling sad? Soon your dolls will be able to tell. To demonstrate the power of a new chip that can run artificially intelligent algorithms, researchers have put it in a doll and programmed it to recognise emotions in facial images captured by a small camera.

The doll can recognise eight emotions in total, including surprise and happiness….Recent advances in AI mean we already have algorithms that can recognise objects, lip-read, make basic decisions and more. It’s only a matter of time before these abilities make their way on to little cheap chips like this one, and then put into consumer devices.

Oh. Maybe social skills aren’t going to save us after all. New Scientist has the rest of the story here.