Terrorist vandalism.
Islamic State militants bombed the historic Nouri Grand Mosque in Mosul late Wednesday, Iraq’s military said, destroying the site where Islamic State’s leader first announced the creation of a self-declared caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria.
They did it purely out of petty, venal spite. Blowing up the place served no useful purpose, not even in the twisted minds of these Daesh barbarians.
They just can’t let go, even after they’ve been shown, graphically, what their incitement to violence achieves.
“My advice would just be to Republicans who do cozy up to him—it’s like hugging a suicide bomber,” [MSNBC Political analyst Elise Jordan] said. “He blows you up in the process with him.”
Her problem with reality continued, as she insisted that Trump “wasted the country’s collective time speculating over the tapes’ existence.” Never mind that the only ones wasting time in the speculation was the NLMSM: it was their editorial decision to obsess over an obvious trolling move. No one made them. And no one outside the “press” room cared.
…for the sake of obstructionism. And now the Progressive-Democrats in the Senate are getting blatant about it. They don’t want to help reform the health care coverage disaster of the last eight years, so to block Republican and Conservative efforts at reform, these Progressive-Democrats have decided to block everything in the Senate. Here’s Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) o the overall attitude:
What more could we do—hold Republican Senators by the arms to stop them from getting to the chamber? I think we’ll use every tool at our disposal.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) even arranged to force cancelation of all committee meetings last Monday, regardless of the subject or purpose of those meetings. No business was allowed to be conducted—all to block health care coverage reform.
Meanwhile, these Progressive-Democrats are ignoring the millions of Americans who are about to lose all coverage as coverage provider after coverage provider leave the Obamacare markets and withdraw from the ObamaMarts in the States. Iowa, for instance, is about to lose all providers of individual plans—every single one of them—and no Iowa citizen will have access to market coverage.
This blanket obstructionism while the health coverage industry burns stinks, it’s damaging to Americans who need or want health care insurance, and it’s destructive of our democracy.
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank can wait until the end of the year before making the decision to raise rates again, while adding it could start reducing the size of its balance sheet before that.
Indeed. We could wait a decade, too. Both delays are about equally foolish.
Increasing interest rates on debt, whether market rates of Federal Reserve benchmark rates, are inherently inflationary. Thus: the Fed needs to set its rates to levels consistent with target inflation, and then sit down, and be quiet.
Mr Evans also said in the interview that even if the Fed does hold off on rate rises until very late in the year, that needn’t stop the institution from pressing forward with its plans to allow its balance sheet to start shrinking at some point this year.
Indeed. The Fed needs to take this separate step, regardless, and get rid of the massive amount of Treasury debt it bought as part of its failed stimulus policy. The Fed isn’t a stimulus institution: its role is strictly the maintenance of stable market pricing and full employment (the latter which shouldn’t be a mandate as full employment will fall out of long-term price stability).
The New York City Council is at it this time.
A new bill would require the New York Police Department to disclose and describe all “surveillance technology,” which it defines as “equipment, software, or system capable of, or used or designed for, collecting, retaining, processing, or sharing audio, video, location, thermal, biometric, or similar information.” The cops would have to post this information online annually and respond to public comments.
Naturally, the ACLU thinks this is a good idea, too.
Yeah. It is a good idea to tell criminals and terrorists just how they’re being identified and might be preempted. Sure.