Politics

London’s new Mayor Sadiq Khan has accused Prime Minister David Cameron and defeated Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith of maintaining a nasty, negative and divisive campaign during the recent mayoral elections. Khan says the conservatives set out to divide London’s ethnic communities by adopting Donald Trump style campaign tactics during an election that broke records, with a 45.6% turnout on Thursday. The Tories have defended their tactics. Chancellor Osborne called them a robust bit of “rough and tumble,” common in today’s politics and necessary for democracy.

After more than 5,000 US-led coalition airstrikes against ISIS targets some Iraqis believe that the U.S. is not doing enough to eradicate the terror group. Some Iraqis blame the U.S. for supporting IS and question the effort it has made over the past two years to help Iraqi forces defeat the terror group. The U.S. military has been providing advisers and equipment to Iraqi and Kurdish forces to roll back the Islamic State. 5,000 US-led coalition airstrikes have been carried out against ISIS targets, mostly in Iraq and some in Syria, at a total cost of $7 billion.

Submitted by Richard Sisk via Military.com,

A small team of U.S. troops was on the ground in Yemen and Navy ships with Marines aboard were offshore to support friendly forces against an al-Qaeda offshoot as the U.S. deepened its involvement in yet another Mideast civil war, the Pentagon said Friday.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to say how many U.S. troops were in Yemen near the port city of Mukalla, a former stronghold of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terror group, or whether they were Special Forces.

Ross Douthat lays out what he calls “the conservative case against Trump.” He says that electing Trump would mean the end of Reaganism, but concedes that for some conservatives, that would not be a bug, but a feature.

Here is the heart of the argument:

Authored by Anis Shivani, originally posted at Salon.com,

Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselves as saviors. Both parties ignored workers, spewed hate, enriched themselves, hollowed out democracy... And now the problem's populism?

This week, on the night of the Indiana primary, I read one of the most loathsome political screeds it has been my misfortune to encounter.