Last May, the world was horrified to learn that the band of marauding, black-flag waving, sword-wielding jihadist desert bandits we all know as the CIA-spawn called ISIS had overrun the ancient city of Palmyra. A UNESCO world heritage site, the city is known for its picturesque ancient ruins and boasts a rich cultural history that brings together Greek, Roman and Persian influences.
Really good column by David Brooks today, in which he looks to the GOP’s future beyond Trump. Excerpts:
This is a moment for honesty. Valuably, Trump has exposed the rottenness of the consultant culture, and the squirrelly way politicians now talk to us. This is a moment for revived American nationalism. Trump’s closed, ethnic nationalism is dominant because Iraq, globalization and broken immigration policies have discredited the expansive open form of nationalism that usually dominates American culture.
And:
US Marines have entered the battle in Iraq to help the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga defend the oil fields from ISIS. The marines are on the front line and have reportedly been tasked with protecting Iraqi units in Makhmur, a scenario President Barack Obama wanted to avoid as long as possible during his time in office.
Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
In response to recent claims by the Obama administration and others that “millions of jobs” have recently been created, I examined the data here at mises.org to see if the claims were true. It turns out that job growth since the 2008 recession has actually been quite weak, and hardly something to boast about.
Nevertheless, our conclusions from these analyses tend to rest on the idea that job growth is synonymous with gains in wealth and economic prosperity.
While Russia and Iran are busy liberating whole cities from ISIS in Syria, the US is sticking with the “one raid at a time” approach and it apparently paid dividends on Thursday morning when Abu Alaa Afri, also known as Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli and Haji Imam was killed in Syria.