Center for American Progress founded by John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton's campaign chairman. pic.twitter.com/cUbda8q8iK
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 17, 2016
.@CBSNews report: Suspect in deadly #BRshooting identified as Gavin Eugene Long of Kansas City https://t.co/tivVfEzszv
— The Advocate (@theadvocatebr) July 17, 2016
Dead #BatonRouge shooter identified, apparently attacked police on his birthday https://t.co/NdZ1LqoyHq pic.twitter.com/1WelLP0Ox4
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 17, 2016
The #BatonRouge shooter described as black male with body armor https://t.co/OEBlVd7SUr https://t.co/FgjV19sVV2— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 17, 2016
Edmonson says no active shooter situation right now. Believe person killed was responsible shooter. #BRshooting— Elizabeth Crisp (@elizabethcrisp) July 17, 2016
Straddling East and West, #Turkey is a critical U.S. ally in fight against #IslamicState. https://t.co/UVcwAYi6sl
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 17, 2016
Dramatic @LATimes front page extra today. #Turkey pic.twitter.com/xA76Dv6q0L
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 16, 2016
The sprawling nation of Turkey is one of the United States’ most important and critically strategic allies, straddling the divide between the Middle East and the West.Still more.
As the only majority-Muslim member of NATO, Turkey has lent its soil to U.S. air bases, supported American military operations in key conflicts — such as Syria today and the Balkans in the 1990s — and served, until recent years, as a rare friendly interlocutor between Muslim nations and Israel.
But Turkey has also been a complicated and prickly ally, and more so as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan deepened his autocratic hold on power.
Turkey’s stability and the friendliness of its military toward the West are also of vital importance to the U.S. and for countries throughout Europe.
Turkey has been a NATO ally since 1952, and U.S. warplanes have used Incirlik Air Base in the south during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
An estimated 1,800 U.S. military personnel are assigned to the base and the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, the capital.
Security at Incirlik is of critical importance for the U.S. military because there is a stockpile of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons at the base.
The B61 thermonuclear weapon is the last of its kind, the only tactical nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal. Unlike strategic weapons, designed to destroy cities and hardened military targets, the tactical weapons are intended for use on a battlefield, delivered by aircraft at treetop level or from high altitudes.
The exact number of B61 bombs at Incirlik is classified, but arms control analysts estimate there are about 50 deployed there.
With the second largest army in NATO, Erdogan was initially hesitant to take part in the U.S-led effort against Islamic State militants in Syria. For Erdogan, the greater goal was ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Erdogan was accused in some U.S. circles of turning a blind eye toward the threat of Islamic State.
However, after a series of high-profile suicide attacks in Turkish cities, Erdogan agreed a year ago to allow U.S. warplanes to fly combat sorties from Incirlik.
Since then, the intensity of the U.S.-led air war in Syria increased sharply because the flight time into Syria was drastically reduced compared with using other, more distant U.S. bases. The Pentagon in March ordered military family members to leave Incirlik due to the rising risk of possible terror attacks against Americans at the base.
Turkey has also begun to clamp down on smuggling routes along its 500-mile border with Syria that Islamic State militants use to move fighters, money and weapons -- especially along a porous 60-mile stretch known as the Manbij Pocket.
Thousands of foreign fighters have slipped across the border amid the maze of supply lines that go through Turkey to join the various militant factions in the multi-sided Syrian war.
The U.S.-led coalition, with Turkey's help, is in the midst of a massive, months-long operation to close the Manbij Pocket. Since the operation began, coalition warplanes have launched about 400 airstrikes to support ground forces known as the Syrian Arab Coalition to push the last remaining Islamic State fighters from the area...
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) July 13, 2016
About 50 protesters gathered in front of The Commercial Appeal offices Wednesday to voice their disappointment in the newspaper for its coverage historically.Here's the editorial, with a picture of the editor.
Kim Hill said she canceled her subscription because she felt the newspaper didn’t cover the African-American community properly.
“I feel like black people have been represented in an unfavorable light by The Commercial Appeal,” Hill said.
Rev. Earle Fisher announced the protest Tuesday via Facebook Live. He called for people to gather at the newspaper at 495 Union Avenue to protest what he called an “incendiary headline” published on the front page of Saturday’s newspaper.
The headline he referenced reads “Gunman targeted whites,” referring to last week’s fatal shooting of five police officers and wounding of others during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.
The Commercial Appeal Editor Louis Graham responded Tuesday with a column, writing “Simply put, we got it wrong.”
An attempted military coup in Turkey introduces the prospect of prolonged instability in a key U.S. ally that could undermine one of Washington’s international priorities: the battle against the Islamic State terrorist organization.Keep reading.
Obama administration officials struggled to respond to the unexpected attempt Friday to unseat Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mr. Erdogan, on vacation when the coup began, returned to Istanbul early on Saturday, and forces supporting him said they were close to putting it down.
But whether successful or not, the coup raises new questions about Mr. Erdogan, who in recent months has shown a greater resolve to confront Islamic State, which is also called Daesh or ISIS.
Amid the race of developments late Friday, the U.S. called for the Turkish public and military to “support the democratically elected government” in the country. But the White House declined to make any further comments on the crisis, suggesting President Barack Obama wanted to keep his options open in Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The U.S. has a major air base in south-central Turkey that it has used to strike Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
Washington appeared to be facing two bleak outcomes in Muslim-majority Turkey in the coming month. The military could succeed in overthrowing Mr. Erdogan, resulting in unrest if the leader’s supporters, many of them religious conservatives, take to the streets.
Conversely, Mr. Erdogan could hold on to power but rule in an increasingly paranoid and authoritarian manner. He has increasingly sought control of the major institutions inside Turkey, including the media, judiciary and security forces...
Such corrosive rhetoric about the nation’s police officers and criminal-justice system is unsettling coming from the president of the United States, but it reflects how thoroughly the misinformation propagated by Black Lives Matter and the media has taken hold. Last month Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in a case about police searches, wrote that blacks are “routinely targeted” by law enforcement, adding that “Until their voices matter, too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.”RTWT.
Hillary Clinton has also taken up this warped cause. On CNN Friday, she decried “systemic” and “implicit bias” in police departments. She also called on “white people” to better understand blacks “who fear every time their children go somewhere.”
Mrs. Clinton ought to take a look at Chicago. Through July 9, 2,090 people have been shot this year, including a 3-year-old boy shot on Father’s Day who will be paralyzed for life, an 11-year-old boy wounded on the Fourth of July, and a 4-year-old boy wounded last week. How many of the 2,090 victims in Chicago were shot by cops? Nine.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump emphasized “law and order” in a video released Friday, saying: “We must stand in solidarity with law enforcement, which we must remember is the force between civilization and total chaos.”
Given the nightmarish events of the past several days, Mr. Trump could do worse than making this presidential campaign one about that line between civilization and anarchy.
In the new tracking poll, through Thursday night, Trump led Clinton 43% to 40%. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of 3 points in either direction, meaning the apparent lead could be the result of chance.Well, we'll see how accurate this is in less than three months.
By Friday morning, the poll, which will be updated every day through the election, was showing a decline in Trump’s lead.
The poll shows big gaps along the lines of race, gender, age and education that have surfaced consistently during the campaign. Through Thursday’s results, Trump led among men, 47% to 36%, while Clinton had a smaller, 41%-34% edge among women. Trump led among voters 45 and older, Clinton among those younger.
Some of Trump’s strongest support comes from white voters who have not graduated from college, among whom he led 53% to 24%. Clinton, by contrast, dominates among minorities, leading 77% to 3% among blacks and 51% to 30% among Latinos.
Clinton also held a narrow edge among white college graduates, 42% to 40%. If she wins that group, Clinton would be the first Democrat to carry white college graduates since polls began asking such demographic questions in the early 1950s.
The poll also offers some support for a prediction that Trump’s backers have made – that he would appeal to disaffected voters who did not cast ballots in 2012. Those who did not vote that year or voted for a minor-party candidate were more likely to favor Trump than Clinton, the poll indicated.
Although respondents to the poll narrowly favor Trump, they don’t necessarily expect him to win. In a separate question asking people who they think will prevail, Clinton led 53% to 41%.
Research has shown that that question often – although not always – forecasts election results more accurately than asking people their voting intention, particularly months before the vote is counted.
The Daybreak tracking poll differs from traditional polls in two major respects. Rather than questioning a different group of respondents for each poll, the survey relies on a panel, currently consisting of about 3,000 people recruited at random to represent U.S. households.
The panel is part of a larger Understanding America Study conducted by USC’s Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. The election survey is being done in partnership with The Times and USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.
Because of the panel design, “we have the same people every time, so changes in the poll are really people changing their minds,” rather than the result of variations in who answers a particular survey, said Arie Kapteyn, the director of the USC Dornsife center, who pioneered the approach for the 2012 election while at Rand Corp.
The panel design typically shows less volatility than traditional polls. Four years ago, it proved more accurate than most other surveys in forecasting the election result, although “maybe that was beginner’s luck,” Kapteyn said.
The other major difference is that the poll, using a 1-to-100 scale, asks respondents to say what the chance is that they will vote as well as the chance that they will cast a ballot for Clinton, for Trump or for another candidate. The results are weighted based on those probabilities, so that a voter who is 100% sure of his or her choice has more impact on the forecast than one who is 60% sure.
That approach is one way to resolve “one of the biggest problems that polls have – deciding who is going to vote,” Kapteyn said.
Most polls use several questions to try to determine who is a likely voter and make a forecast based on that, but efforts to predict likely voting are often wrong, particularly far in advance of the election. Employing probabilities means “you get to use all the data,” Kapteyn said. In theory, that should lead to more reliable results...
Update your NY Times style guide: Out: Jihadist -- In: Surly misfit https://t.co/MhuHVIz8IL
— Doug Powers (@ThePowersThatBe) July 16, 2016
French official: Attacker in Nice underwent swift radicalization https://t.co/oIhsP1EGXG
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 16, 2016
NICE, France — The Islamic State on Saturday asserted responsibility for an attack that killed 84 people in this coastal French city, according to the organization’s news agency, as France’s interior minister announced for the first time that investigators think the attacker had been “radicalized.”More.
It remains unclear whether the militant group directed the attack, was taking responsibility for an assault it inspired or was simply seeking publicity from an event in which it had no direct hand.
“It seems” that the attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, “radicalized his views very rapidly. These are the first elements that our investigation has come up with through interviews with his acquaintances,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday, without offering details. Five people have been detained for questioning in the case.
“We are now facing individuals who are responding positively to the messages issued by the Islamic State without having had any special training and without having access to weapons that allow them to commit mass murder,” Cazeneuve said.
The Amaq news agency, which is linked to the Islamic State, cited an “insider source” in declaring that Bouhlel “was a soldier of the Islamic State.”
“He executed the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations that fight the Islamic State,” the news agency wrote.
Separately, the Islamic State’s al-Bayan radio station said Bouhlel used “a new tactic” to wreak havoc. “The crusader countries know that no matter how much they enforce their security measures and procedures, it will not stop the mujahideen from striking,” the station said.
But the oblique claim of responsibility left open the question of whether Bouhlel had acted alone or had any prior communication with the group, which has also claimed ties to the attacks that struck Paris twice last year and Brussels in March. French authorities have been scrambling to determine whether Bouhlel had a support network in Nice, where he appears to have been living for at least six years...
Muslims Celebrate #BastilleDay: 80 Dead, 68; “The worst tragedy in the history of Nice” – but many more are to come https://t.co/siorbmNeS9
— Jewhadi™ (@JewhadiTM) July 15, 2016
Jihadis have had their eyes on France for quite some time. The Islamic State issued this call in September 2014:
So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him…Yes, “run him over with your car.”
Then again from the Islamic State in May 2016:
“The French must die by the thousands…. Towards paradise, that is the path….Come, brother, let’s go to paradise, our women are waiting for us there, with angels as servants. You will have a palace, a winged horse of gold and rubies….With a little rocket-launcher, you can easily get one of them… you do something like that in the name of Dawla (Islamic State), and France will be traumatised for a century.”The French are already traumatized. The BBC reported last week that “more than 5,000 French police will be deployed at key venues in and around Paris ahead of the Euro 2016 football final between France and Portugal,” and that “there will be no victory parade if France win.” Why not? For fear of jihad terror attacks.
The Bastille Day jihad massacre demonstrates that the answer to jihad attacks is not to curtail one’s activities and cower in fear. Even if free people do that, the jihadis will strike anyway. Even without a victory parade, the jihadis struck yet again in France. The response should not be to cower in fear, but to recognize that this is a war and act accordingly. France has just suffered a fresh attack in a war that is being fought by people in service of an ideology that France, like other Western countries, refuses to acknowledge even exists.
France, even as it is under serious attack by the warriors of jihad, continues to pursue policies that will only result in the arrival of still more Muslims to France – and with them will come jihad terrorists, and many, many more jihad massacres like the one on Bastille Day in Nice. French curtailing their activities for fear of being struck by jihadis did not save them. The Bastille Day jihad attack should be the last to take place under the regime of politically correct fantasy that forces law enforcement and intelligence officials to pretend that the threat is other than what it is, and that the remedy is to apply, one more time, policies that have failed again and again and again.
Bastille Day should be a day for the releasing of prisoners. In the war against the global jihad, the truth has been prisoner for too long. It is time to set it free – before it, too, becomes irrevocably a casualty of this war against an enemy no one dares name...
At least 60 dead after truck crashes into crowd in Nice, France. Police have called it a terror attack https://t.co/eJd4h6XZtf
— TIME.com (@TIME) July 14, 2016
A *truck* didn't crash into the crowd at Nice. A *terrorist driving a truck* crashed into the innocents. #nice https://t.co/V7HpGf3GAH
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 14, 2016
Public service announcement to the U.S. media: A "truck" didn't slam into a crowd in #Nice. An Islamic jihadist driving a truck did. #ISLAM
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 15, 2016
Tomorrow's @dailytelegraph front page... pic.twitter.com/8eNHt9KJhk
— Dave Meddows (@davemeddows) July 15, 2016
The front page of The New York Times for Friday, July 15, 2016 pic.twitter.com/MMbqVANu7X
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 15, 2016
