Anthony Scaramucci W.H communications chief Rips Trump as an inherited-money bully in 2015 rant

Behind the front lines in the fight to annihilate ISIS in Afghanistan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/behind-the-front-lines-in-the-fight-to-annihilate-isis-in-afghanistan/2017/07/23/0e1f88d2-6bb4-11e7-abbc-a53480672286_story.html?utm_term=.aecbcb06ddb0



ACHIN, Afghanistan —A recurring rumble of explosions echoes off the barren, boulder-strewn slopes of the Spin Ghar mountains, each ordnance aimed wishfully at redoubts where Islamic State militants are suspected of hiding. Afghan and U.S. special forces listen in on enemy chatter, intercepting dozens of their radio channels. American AC-130 gunships and F-16 fighter jets whir in circles overhead, at low altitude, waiting for strike orders. Soldiers on the ground man the mortars.

The operation against the Islamic State in Khorasan — or ISIS-K, as the Syria-based group’s Afghan contingent is known — is now into its fourth month of unremitting warfare. The U.S. military has pledged to “annihilate” the group by year’s end, and the redoubled assault has contributed to a spike in U.S. airstrikes to levels not seen in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama’s troop surge in 2012. One in five of those strikes is against ISIS-K, despite it controlling only slivers of mountainous territory.

The battle is lopsided, but each day the front line here in Achin district moves back only slightly. Both local intelligence officials and the U.S. military believe that ISIS-K is replenishing its stock of fighters almost as quickly as it loses them. A sense that this may be an indefinite mission has set in.

Soon after its founding in 2014, ISIS-K descended into this district and established it as its stronghold. Entire villages emptied as word of the group’s mercilessness spread. Fighters infamously strapped defiant local clerics to explosives and filmed their detonations. For nearly three years, ISIS-K held firm not just in the Spin Ghars but in the vacated villages in the fertile valley beneath them.

In April, the U.S. military dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb, a MOAB — nicknamed “the mother of all bombs” — on a cave complex in one of Achin’s valleys, known as the Momand. It is unclear how many fighters, if any, were killed. The MOAB — which felt so forceful that “every ant in the valley must’ve died,” said one villager — was followed by weeks of airstrikes on compounds that ISIS-K fighters had held for two years.

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Disabled and disdained

In rural America, some towns are divided between those who work and those who don’t



GRUNDY, Va. — Five days earlier, his mother had spent the last of her disability check on bologna, cheese, bread and Pepsi. Two days earlier, he had gone outside and looked at the train tracks that wind between the coal mines and said, “I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this.” One day earlier, the family dog had collapsed from an unnamed illness, and, without money for a veterinarian, he had watched her die on the porch. And now it was Monday morning, and Tyler McGlothlin, 19, had a plan.

“About time to go,” said his mother, Sheila McGlothlin, 57, stamping out a cigarette.

“I’m ready,” Tyler said, walking across a small, decaying house wedged against a mountain and strewn with dirty dishes, soda cans and ashtrays. They went outside, stepping past bottles of vodka his father had discarded before disappearing into another jail cell, and climbed a dirt path toward a housemate’s car.

He knew his plan was not a good one. But what choice did he have? He had looked inside the refrigerator that morning, and the math didn’t add up. Five people were living in the house, none of whom worked. It would be 17 days before his mother received another disability check and more food stamps. And the refrigerator contained only seven eggs, two pieces of bologna, 24 slices of Kraft American cheese, some sliced ham and one pork chop.

It had to be done.

Tyler would hold a sign on the side of the road and beg for money. He would go to a town 30 miles down the road and stand at one of the region’s busiest intersections, where he prayed no one would recognize him, to plead for help from people whose lives seemed so far removed from his own.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/07/21/how-disability-benefits-divided-this-rural-community-between-those-who-work-and-those-who-dont/?utm_term=.0ff1b660560e

It's quite a story and worth a read. There are people like this all over America.

A 10-year-olds overdose death reveals Miami neighborhoods intense struggle with opioids

When 10-year-old Alton Banks left the community swimming pool on the last day of his life, he walked past the elementary school where he had just finished fifth grade.

He passed a cheery banner that defined a beaten-down inner-city neighborhood trying to will itself into up-and-comingness: “Experience Overtown. Eat, Live, Work, Play.”

He walked past a fancy new apartment building under construction, then a long row of ragged homes and chickens clucking freely on sidewalks littered with crushed tall-boy beer cans in brown paper bags.

He arrived home on that hot afternoon, June 23, and climbed the concrete steps to his second-floor apartment across from the homeless people crowded under a highway overpass.

He started vomiting. His mother called an ambulance. And that evening he was dead, killed by a combination of heroin and fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

And no one yet has the slightest clue how the opioid crisis that has battered the nation with such ferocity ended up taking a happy, skinny little boy a month shy of his 11th birthday.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-10-year-olds-overdose-death-reveals-miami-neighborhoods-intense-struggle-with-opioids/2017/07/20/0618e49a-6cee-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_miami-opioid-1045pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f0f00870731d

Chester Bennington: Five of His Best Musical Moments

Pennsylvania parents get jail time in 'gifted' girls case

(CNN)The Pennsylvania parents who "gifted" six of their daughters to one man were sentenced to up to seven years in prison Tuesday, according to the Bucks County District Attorney.

Savilla Stoltzfus, 43, and Daniel Stoltzfus, 44, formerly members of the Amish community, allowed Lee Kaplan, 51, to live with and have sex with six of their nine daughters in return for financial support, according to prosecutors. The daughters are now age 9 to 19.

The Stoltzfuses entered pleas in April to one count of endangering the welfare of children. Savilla pleaded guilty and Daniel pleaded no contest. Their sentences are the maximum allowed by law, according to prosecutors.

"Individually, her sentence is completely appropriate," said William Craig Penglase, Savilla Stoltzfus' attorney. "I understand the court's outrage at their behavior."

Penglase said he was surprised, however, that his client's cooperation with prosecutors did not lighten her sentence.



http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us/pennsylvania-parents-gifted-girls-case/index.html

Apparently it's not something that happens only in other countries far away. Some Americans pimp out their own children so perverts can abuse them right here in our country.

Sia - Never Give Up (from the Lion Soundtrack) [Lyric Video]

Alex Jones Rants as an Indie Folk Song