It's too hard for U.S. media to keep track of people killed here by police, but The Guardian is managing to do it from the U.K.

A screenshot of the control panel of the Guardian interactive website that keeps track, as it says, of "People killed by police in the US" -- tallying, as of this afternoon, 470 nationwide year-to-date. Note that there's also a map view. (Click to enlarge.)

by Ken

"Can you imagine any entity in our so called free press doing something like this?" Johnny Morales asks in "The Guardian UK embarrasses All US Media but will we notice?," posting on Daily Kos as johnnyintexas. "This" is a comprehensive gathering of information about killings by the police in the U.S., viewable in list or map form and fully searchable by name, state, armed/unarmed, gender, age, race/ethnicity, and cause.

Johnny says he can't imagine it being done here, for the simplest imaginable reason: No one seems to have even tried to do it. Nothing, he says, has stood in the way of any U.S. media outlet doing it.

Yet until The Guardian did, we've been told that the Federal government doesn't keep track of this, local and state governments don't coordinate the data and as a result doing it was impossible for any American media to accomplish.

That they are doing so has been referenced in another diary as a source of data, but the focus of that diary was a specific set of data in a companion project covering police killings from 2012-2015.

To the extent that U.S. media have even given attention to the idea of such a project, it has been written off as "impossible to accomplish since there are no central reporting structures to ask." Apparently, though, the data was available for the asking, provided somebody bothered to do the asking. The fact that it took a British newspaper to do so, says Johnny -- and it managed the feat "without turning over heaven and earth" -- "really should embarrass our own media, all of it. Even our most Liberal entities never have seemed to gather themselves up to do the same thing."

Here, by the way, is the record to date for June (same link; again, click to enlarge):



"I think Kudos are in order for The Guardian," says Johnny.

They proved a point I believe to be truer than ever which is if you want honest reporting on what is happening in the USA, you need to read foreign news outlets. Who instead are report on events here like our media seems to relish reporting on events elsewhere (because things are so peachy keen in the USA).

Of course, I don't expect anyone in our media will be embarrassed.

Instead they will utterly ignore this, and hope by doing so so few Americans realize what's being done by a foreign media outlet to inform them, that it will fail to gain traction and be forgotten once they are done.

At the very least we should spread the word and encourage anyone who doesn't know about what The Guardian is doing to visit and learn the details that up to now our own media all of them said was beyond their abilities to obtain.

One other thing you'll be grateful for when you visit the Guardian website: no fund-raising appeal.

#

Whatever state you live in, here's a reason to be proud

For a better view of what each of these Northeastern states is worst at, click to enlaurge.

by Ken

Here's the explanation provided by Kate Peregrina ("a writer and English teacher living in Spain") for this fascinating list-with-maps published on Thrillist:

One thing that makes the US great: no two states are the same. That diversity leads to distinct strengths and weaknesses, but how can you know what makes North Dakota different from South Dakota, besides a made-up line separating them?

Well, in the interest of showing that every state sucks in some way, we picked out one key area where each is most deficient. This is what every state is the worst at.

This strikes me as actually pretty cool. I'm not going to swear to the 100 percent veracity of each of these special distinctions for the 50 United States, or insist that each is necessarily the worst thing that could be said about the state. But it seems safe to say that the states are pretty darned special in their special categories. Like it's possible that there are criteria by which some other state or states has/have more or worse puppy mills than Missouri (in fact, the explanatory link claims, "Missouri, Kansas top national list of worst puppy mills"), and there may be worse things to say about Missouri, but I think we can rest easy that Missouri has a lot to answer for in the puppy-mill department.

There's an alphabetical list of the states with an explanation each state's category win plus an explanatory link. I've plunked out just a couple in each of the four quadrant maps.

Note that in the maps, I've lopped off some duplicated states but not others. Sue me. Also note that I've lopped off Hawaii, which in the original appears at the bottom of the Southeast map. Alaska off to the southwest of the Southwest is one thing (though its out-of-placeness did discourage me from saluting its whopping chlamydia rate); Hawaii-in-the-Caribbean struck me as pushing it a little too far. In case you're wondering:

Hawaii: Highest homelessness rate
The good news is that homelessness has been decreasing in the United States in recent years. The bad news is that Hawaii still has about five times more homeless people than Mississippi, Indiana, and Kansas. At least they get to sleep on a beach?

As for the rest of the country, here are the maps and some highlights.


NORTHEAST

[See map above.]

Vermont: Most illicit drug use
Vermont’s love for drugs can perhaps be linked to the fact that it is also the state with the fewest children, and now most of its residents have reached an age where they realize the incurable pain life has to offer. Either that, or they're just really into partying.

Ohio: Worst water
Ohio came in dead last in a study of water cleanliness by the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There's something in the water", might actually explain why Ohio's professional sports teams never win anything.


NORTHWEST



Wyoming: Highest suicide rate
Wyoming has the highest rate of suicides at 23.2 per 100,000. The state with the highest will to live is New Jersey, which has a suicide rate nearly three times lower than Wyoming’s. Thankfully, Wyoming is also the least populous state.

Washington: Worst at loving Justin Bieber
Washington just legalized pot smoking for kicks, but still won't let people grow weed at home. Imagine all the money they're wasting that stoners could be injecting into the pizza delivery industry.has the lowest salaries in the country. Bad news for employees, great news for employers.


SOUTHWEST



California: Most polluted cities
Everybody already knows the air in Los Angeles feels like it was imported from a Mad Max movie. But, not surprisingly, the air also sucks in Bakersfield, Modesto, Sacramento, and Fresno. As if you needed another reason not to visit Fresno.

New Mexico: Most accidental deaths
And the award for most fatally careless goes to...New Mexico!


SOUTHEAST



Georgia: Least integrity
Politicians in Georgia are the least ethical in the country, with an estimated 658 state workers having accepted gratuities during a two-year period. State legislators were not available for comment without an offer of basketball tickets or honey baked hams.

Texas: Fewest high school graduates per capita
Less than 80% of Texans have a high school diploma. It's actually the only state that dips below 80%, too. Everything is bigger in Texas -- including dropout rates, apparently.


OKAY, A COUPLE OF THINGS

Like, for example:

I was all set to offer a tip of the hat to SOUTH DAKOTA for its lowest-paid teachers, only to disqualify it in view of the explanation: "The good news is that teachers aren’t singled out in South Dakota, because everyone gets paid less statewide. South Dakota actually has the lowest salaries in the country. Bad news for employees, great news for employers."

Then there's NEBRASKA and its "Least Furniture Manufacturing." Really? Least furniture manufacturing? Nothing on a par with, say, deficient Justin Bieber worship?

#

There's good news about World Cup fever -- if it's caught early enough, a full recovery is possible

U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard was understandably dejected after the deciding goal scored by Belgium's Romelu Lukaku in the 2-1 U.S. loss. Poor Tim had himself quite a game, with 18 saves on 27 shots on goal (three times as many shots on goal as the U.S. team managed).

by Ken

What a game!

No, no, I'm just kidding. Not only didn't I see the game -- meaning the U.S.'s 2-1 World Cup elimination loss to Belgium today -- I didn't give a good gosh darn about it. I'm just thinking that now, given the result, and while I understand that we're not fully out of the World Cup woods yet, maybe we Americans can cut the crap and go back to our time-honored (and utterly appropriate) grinding apathy toward the entire excruciatingly uninteresting sport.

I know we're always reminded how nuts the rest of the world is for soccer, but could we focus for a moment on that strategic word "nuts"? Is it really so hard to believe that all those people are, at least in this regard, nuts?

There's more than one way to excruciate a crowd. The Brits -- and their imperial and Commonwealth legatess -- love to do it with cricket, which as far as I can tell isn't even a sport, just a bunch of guys standing around with one guy holding a bat and another guy hurling a ball and everything else made up on the spot. I know that Cricket World claims that there actually are rules to the whole imbroglio, but come on, let's cut the kidding.

Soccer does have rules, I appreciate, but who cares? The biting guy seems to have some original thoughts about the "game," but it doesn't look as if that's going to take this misbegotten excuse for sport anywhere. Mostly it seems to serve as an occasion for fan riots, which are perhaps to be admired as an extremely primitive form of population control, but again doesn't really make for a riveting spectator experience.

The good news: At least within the borders of these here United States, however, the World Cup has come and gone -- done, over, kaput, finito, terminé. The bad news: In four years (it is four years, isn't it?), it starts all over again. Unless if, when it knocks next time, we're all really, really quite and pretend nobody's home, and maybe eventually it'll just give up and go away and bother some other people.

If by chance anyone feels impelled to invade the comments section to provide incisive, withering commentary on my anti-soccer worthlessness, just stop and consider: Do you really think I -- or any sensible person -- care?

#

YOU WANNA LAUGH? CRY? TAKE YOUR CHOICE

My friend Dan, who lives in Montreal, sent this to me today. I doubt he's worried; he has dual citizenship. And he's got plenty of Queen Elizabeth's money. And you?