It’s… It’s not going great this Tuesday.
The US and five arab nations finally struck at ISIS in Syria early this morning, after weeks of talking about it. And they poured it on thick:drones, fighter jets, bombers and cruise missiles from nearby ships all rained destruction on targets in a wave of multiple attacks. Syria’s been torn apart by a brutal civil war for years, and this is the most-cataclysmic US activity the nation’s seen.
Did we let Syria know it was coming? Nope, but the president says the attacks are a great sign that we’ve got support from Arab states in the region.
Why these air strikes? They were successful in scattering ISIS forces terrorizing Kurdish Yazidis in Iraq. Well, sort of successful. ISIS still has a robust presence there, and is notching victories all the time.
It wasn’t just ISIS we were after, though. The US quietly snuck away from the rest of the pack to attack an al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Khorason group. Officials are making vague, shadowy allusions to an impending attack on Americans—the kind that make you think there’s something really serious at play, whether there is or not.
Farther west, a Syrian fighter pilot ventured into Israeli airspace and immediately died. “We cannot tolerate any penetration of the Israeli airspace, so we had to shut him down even though we understand that his intention was not to attack us,” an Israeli general said. And check out that arched eyebrow on Benjamin Netanyahu as he explains the move.
Guys. Global warming is a thing that we need to stop. I know there have been marches, and that there are high-level talks going on today about this. But then there are also new reports that suggest where everybody’s going to want to move, climate-wise, once the planet is more solidly ruined—a tacit shrug, suggesting we’ve already failed.
By the way: Here. People are going to want to live here.
Portland Public Schools faces fairly rare problem for public districts these days: Figuring out how to spend millions in extra cash. It’s so rare that no one can agree exactly what to do with all that money.
Forest Grove becomes the latest Oregon city to hope that it’ll be able to tax legal pot, even though the pot legalization measure we’ll all vote on in November very clearly says that’s not an option.
More than a million people could be infected with Ebola by January, says the CDC. Or the epidemic swarming West Africa could be nearly wiped out. It’ll probably be somewhere in between.
Don’t jump into the tiger enclosure.
Rain’s back, meaning I’ll officially be the only Bike Commute Challenge participant in all of Portland to have a 100 percent commute rate by the end of this week. Officially. All of you are soft.
My god yes.
some of us have family members that need help getting to the Dr. If that makes us “soft” then I’ll gladly not have a 100 percent bike commuting percentage. Because I’m one thousand percent awesome. See you in the office, tough guy!
My bike commute is 12 miles each way so no I will not be logging 100 %.
pinehurstkid – the bike commute challenge is for commuting to work.