Columnists

After securing the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump promised a “tell all” speech about Hillary Clinton. On June 22nd he delivered a slanderous collage of all the Clinton lies and innuendos the rightwing has circulated over the last 24 years – imagine a speech written by Ann Coulter. Those of us who believe Clinton would be a better president should be forewarned: there’s more coming from Trump. Here’s how to defend Hillary.

“Hillary Clinton… is a world-class liar.” Consider the source. The award-winning fact-checking website, Politifact, rated Hillary the most truthful of all the 2016 candidates. By contrast, Politifact rated Donald Trump the least truthful with 75 percent of his statements “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire.”

Trump’s June 22nd speech contained at least 40 lies or gross distortions.

Those of us who defend Clinton should use Kevin Drum’s article “Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy” as our bible. -more-

U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy (D.CT) filibustered in the Senate for 15 hours in an effort to move forward gun safety policy. On June 20, the Senate, as expected, failed to pass four gun-control related measures in the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub massacre. The four measures - - two by Democrats and two weaker ones by Republicans -- included: -more-

What do you do when a difficult event takes place, and you have no explanation for it? One tendency for those of us subject to psychosis is to ruminate about it, and produce delusions, in a futile attempt at finding an explanation. -more-

Law enforcement is at least initially calling the horrific Orlando shootings by Omar Mateen as “domestic terrorism.” I don’t believe it was domestic terrorism. Sure, ISIS took “credit” for the shootings but I don’t believe for a minute that Mateen has any relationship to ISIS. He was just looking for his fifteen minutes of hate-fueled infamy. Domestic terrorism focuses on the motive behind the act and it specifies that the motive has to be to coerce people or influence or affect government policy. That doesn’t appear to be the case here.

Mateen’s father, Mir Seddique, claimed this horrible act had nothing to do with religion. “We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,” Seddique told NBC. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”

Thus, what we have here is a homophobic act by a mentally ill person, not domestic terrorism. -more-