America

Meet Abu Omar al-Shishani, or, “Omar the Chechen.”

Al-Shishani is Islamic State’s “minister of war,” and on March 4, the US tried to kill him.

Initially, reports indicated that an airstrike in the northeastern Syrian town of Shaddadi likely succeeded in “eliminating” the militant. But “on-the-ground” intelligence from London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (who else?) suggested that in fact, al-Shishani was still alive and had been transported to Raqqa where he was being treated for serious injuries.

As we detailed previously, the growth of federal income and employment tax withholdings, the broadest and most timely read on the health of the job market "has been sinking at an alarming rate." What is worse, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, IRS and Treasury data show refunds tracking 2-3% below last year’s levels - not good news for companies that focus on the low-end consumer, the cohort that tends to spend (rather than save) their refunds.

Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The Twitter-incited mob that shut down last week’s Donald Trump rally at the University of Illinois’ Chicago pavilion was the first skirmish in what is shaping up to be a civil war between a political Left that has lost its mind and a political Right that has lost its mind and its soul. The tensions between these two camps are so contorted and dishonest that even trying to unpack the issues puts the un-packer in jeopardy of being branded as one kind of thought-criminal or another.

I see that my “SJWs Will Elect Trump” post was a big hit over the weekend (thanks, Real Clear Politics, for the link). I posted it after midnight on Saturday morning — after reading accounts of the cancelled Trump rally in Chicago — and by Sunday afternoon, had changed one thing about the view expressed in that post. I had said that the SJWs shutting down an American presidential candidate’s rally was a sign that Trump had to go on — by which I meant that the SJWs could not be allowed to win yet again.

Last week, when Bloomberg was celebrating the 7 year anniversary of the third longest, most central bank-supported, and thus "most hated" bull market in history, it said that  "investors are awash in angst, showing little faith the run can continue. They worry about contracting corporate earnings, slowing Chinese growth and uncertainty over interest rates. And they’re walking the talk by pulling cash from stocks at almost the fastest rate on record. It’s not unwarranted - the S&P 500 has gained just 0.5 percent in the last 18 months."