Andrew Cockburn suggests that the "mystique of high-value targeting" won't defeat ISIS. Why? If you saw Munich, you already know the answer: take out one target, and another one jumps right in its place, and so it goes with ISIS, which steps up its attacks when a leader dies, to a large degree because they're "invariably and immediately replaced, and almost always by someone (often a relative ready for revenge) younger, more aggressive, and eager to prove himself." We might do better by, oh, I don't know, trying not to control other countries so we can take their resources from them, and then making war on them when we don't get our way. I know it's not as sexy, but it just might work better.
The European Union seems headed in the wrong direction on its net neutrality proposal -- this, after the EU Parliament declared its support for strong net neutrality principles. You'll recognize the demons the EU would set loose -- paid prioritization, actual censorship -- and you'll also recognize the pushback (the "Keep the Internet Open" manifesto signed by youth from 24 different EU countries). I hope they look at what's happened in America so far and realize that they can win.
The battle over solar power in Florida remains interesting, as a group called Conservatives for Energy Freedom is blasting Americans for Prosperity (who else?) for opposing a ballot initiative that would make rooftop solar easier to do in the Sunshine State. When you see the Christian Coalition and the Sierra Club on the same side of something, you might conclude it's actual bipartisanship, not the fake corporate "bipartisanship" the two political parties continually foist upon us.
So Gov. Walker (E-WI) signs the "right-to-work" bill he was so "reluctant" to push, and President Obama slams it. But where was the President when the Employee Free Choice Act was one vote short of breaking a filibuster? Not working the phones, like he was when he was trying to get Ben Bernanke another term at the Fed (or, to his credit, when he was trying to get don't-ask-don't-tell repealed). Meanwhile, Mr. Walker thinks Mr. Obama should look to Wisconsin if he wants to get things done -- a state lagging behind most of the rest of the country in job creation!
Finally, we learn that telling big banks to stop funding mountaintop removal coal-mining is having an impact, as PNC Bank -- only the nation's 7th largest bank, but one of the banks most invested in mountaintop removal -- announces it will no longer fund two coal corporations still practicing mountaintop removal, which effectively ends their involvement in funding the practice. You may remember telling PNC to do that last year. PNC joins otherwise unsavory bankster corporations such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo in this refusal. Now that's what I call "starving the beast."
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