The French Foreign Legion has a special place in history, known both for its bravery and for its failures, but mostly for its association with the ills of imperialism and colonialism. That's why comments like this stand out.
Comedians love him. Donald Trump is practically a caricature of himself. He's so rediculous he should be an asterisk in the polling results.
Yet Trump leads all Republicans in the polls. Not just one poll, not just one state, and not just one week. Why?
Most people write it off as a fluke. It's not sustainable. It's just a temporary embarrassing moment in American politics.
Today's Beastiable is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who has now announced his candidacy for the Presidency. He has said many beastly things, as admirably reported by Daily Kos' esteemed Puddytat. Thus, now that he has announced, he has earned his turn as one of Les Beastiables.
NOTE FOR NEW READERS: This series features a new Les Beastiables cartoon every Friday afternoon here at caucus99percent. We indulge in a little Franglish because the French are tres classy. But I digresse.
For serious source information, please join me below for the squirming of beasties on the hot seat. Then you'll be able to "cleanse your palate" with a cute photo before you leave.
Americans are intimately familiar with the city of Fallujah. It's where the Sunni resistance to the occupation of Iraq was born, and where nearly 100 American soldiers lost their lives in the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. More than 1,500 civilians were killed and over 70,000 buildings were destroyed in those battles.
Republican candidates are trying to one-up each other in the game of "Who can be the bigger Warhawk".
I found this nugget (which I retitled) inside a Wapo article:
Report: Greek leader threatened with military hostilities
Greece’s dire financial straits meant it had scant leverage to push back against some of its creditors’ most onerous demands. ...
The moves are fostering a deep sense of resentment among Tsipras’s allies and a conviction that Europeans sought to humiliate him. During a pivotal meeting with Merkel, French President François Hollande and European Council President Donald Tusk, Tsipras at one point received a thinly veiled threat that if he walked away and left the euro, Greece risked going it alone geopolitically, too.
According to two officials in Brussels with knowledge of the exchange, the specter was raised of aggression from Turkey — a neighboring nation viewed in Greece as a historic antagonist.
Are you sufficiently terrified? Unless you are currently cowering under your bed and praying to whatever diety you think can help you, then you aren't terrified enough.
If you don't believe me then you weren't watching cable news in the days leading up to Independence Day.
The "Little Ice Age" and its included climactic minima is often partially attributed to an extreme solar minimum. In particular,
During the period 1645--1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550.[69] Other indicators of low solar activity during this period are levels of the isotopes carbon-14 and beryllium-10.[70]
Now, a new model of solar behavior which is producing shockingly accurate predictions with respect to the sun's 11 year activity cycle predicts an extreme decrease in solar activity during the 2030s.
continued below the break
