Time to fire up the blog again after a long break. I’ve found the world just too depressing to write about with violence and war all over the world including police shooting civilians, civilians shooting police, and too many people just shooting each other, Yes, the major incidents we hear about are racial, but there are just too many that are not.
This Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon illustrates only too well what kind of society we seem to be rapidly moving toward. The violence is numbing. And our Congress seems unable to act. We can only hope that there is not another arms race with law enforcement adding more tanks and military style equipment, but more emphasis on community policing. Granted that Brattleboro is a small town, but our police chief started something he calls “Coffee with a Cop” several years ago. Anyone can go to a local restaurant and talk to an officer. Larger places can do something similar in precincts and districts. More talk can lead to more trust. OK. Maybe not always, but there will never be trust if everyone is just shooting at each other.
This is the morning of the start of the Republican Convention. The lead New York Times story begins
The attack on police officers in Baton Rouge, La., cast a grim mood over the opening of the Republican National Convention here, as Donald J. Trump responded to the killings with a stark warning that the country was falling apart.
A string of shootings targeting police officers, as well as the recent killings of two black men by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, had already pushed gun violence and social unrest to the center of the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump has campaigned on the theme of “law and order” since the assassination this month of five police officers in Dallas, and he is likely to amplify that message in the coming days.
Cleveland has assigned about 500 police officers specifically to handle the convention, and it has brought in thousands more officers to help, from departments as distant as California and Texas.
But some local officials have expressed concern about the possibility of violence owing to Ohio’s open-carry gun laws. Though demonstrators and others in the convention district have been barred from possessing a range of items, including gas masks, there was no prohibition on the brandishing of firearms.
On Sunday, the president of Cleveland’s police union called for additional measures to protect the security of the event, and urged Mr. Kasich to suspend open-carry gun rights. The governor’s office said Mr. Kasich did not have “the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws.”
Plus
And the convention was likely to begin with a trumpeting of support for police officers. Convention organizers said on Sunday that the theme of the first day, Monday, would be “Make America Safe Again.”
Jeff Larson, the convention’s chief executive, said in a news conference that a leading speaker would be Rudolph W. Giuliani, whom he described as “the law-and-order mayor of New York.”Mr. Giuliani has been a forceful critic of the Black Lives Matter movementand has been outspoken in his defense of law enforcement practices over the last few weeks.
Following the shooting death of three law enforcement officers Sunday in Baton Rouge, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump blasted President Obama on Twitter and Facebook, saying he has “no clue” how to deal with a country that is a “divided crime scene.”
Meanwhile, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton called the shooting “devastating” and “an assault on all of us.”
“There is no justification for violence, for hate, for attacks on men and women who put their lives on the line every day in service of our families and communities,” she said.
Clinton also called for unity:
“We must not turn our backs on each other. We must not be indifferent to each other. We must all stand together to reject violence and strengthen our communities. Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and families of the police officers who were killed and injured today.”
She will be speaking at the NAACP convention today and it will be interesting to hear what she has to say.
For me, the appropriate response is to begin with a ban on sales of large magazines and then move on to banning assault style weapons. Both the Dallas and Baton Rouge shooters were trained in the military and the idea that they can easily get and use similar weapons after they are discharged is frightening. We actually need more talk, not more guns. Let us hope there is no violence in Cleveland.
FortLeft 
I love Cleveland…I hope they do us all proud.
The City might do well, it is the visitors I’m worried about.