IS Leader Killed? Today's News for June 16th

BBC:

Islamic State leader Baghdadi 'may have been killed by Russia'

Russia's defence ministry is investigating whether one of its air strikes in Syria killed the leader of the Islamic State militant group (IS).

The ministry said an air strike may have killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and up to 330 other fighters on 28 May.

It said the raid had targeted a meeting of the IS military council in its de-facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria.

There have been a number of previous reports of Baghdadi's death.

...His only public appearance since claiming the creation of an IS caliphate was in a video in June 2014, in which he was seen delivering a sermon in Mosul after IS took control of the city.

Was Baghdadi killed? The TRUTH is "probably".

The bigger TRUTH? It doesn't really matter. 16 years ago, when the War on Islam began, he wasn't even a target, or even an enemy combatant. Baghdadi will be replaced by someone else after he is dead. The modern game of "whack-a-terrorist" has no end.

In other news...

CNN:

Threatening letters sent to Georgia congressional candidate's home, news stations

Suspicious envelopes were sent to the homes of Georgia politician Karen Handel and her neighbors as well as two Atlanta-area news stations, law enforcement said.

Law enforcement responded to the suburban Atlanta neighborhood Thursday afternoon after a resident reported receiving an envelope, Roswell Police spokeswoman Lisa Holland said. The envelopes contained threatening letters and white powder.

Later Thursday, news stations WAGA Fox 5 and WXIA 11Alive received similar envelopes, the FBI said. An investigation is underway to see if they are related.

Preliminary field tests on the substance mailed to WAGA suggest the powder consisted mostly of baking soda, the FBI said.

The FBI said the letter WAGA received was very similar to those received by those in Handel's neighborhood.

Handel is a candidate in Georgia's closely watched, tightening 6th Congressional District special election against newcomer Jon Ossoff.

In case you hadn't noticed, Handel is a Republican. When Republicans are victims, CNN conveniently neglects to report that fact.

Strangely, Fox News didn't cover this story at all. Instead, Fox gave a regurgitation of all the recent Leftist violence. Good to know, but it is news analysis, not a lede story.

Speaking of a good lede story...

CNS News:

$240,418,000,000: Feds Collect Record Taxes in May; Still Run $88,246,000,000 Deficit

The headline says it all, although the "record" was just for the month of May. Regardless, it shows a government whose spending is out of control. The U.S. is not on a fiscal path which can be sustained.

Finally...

The Weekly Standard:

Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror

Paglia is the last intelligent voice on the Left, and should be heeded by both sides of the political divide. Whenever she writes an editorial or does an interview, pay attention. In this case, her interview linked above is a must-read. Here is a taste:

Trump's "travel ban" executive order in late January was obviously bungled—issued way too fast and with woefully insufficient research (pertaining, for example, to green-card holders, who should have been exempted from the start). The administration bears full responsibility for fanning the flames of an already aroused "Resistance." However, I fail to see the "chaos" in the White House that the mainstream media (as well as conservative Never Trumpers) keep harping on—or rather, I see no more chaos than was abundantly present during the first six months of both the Clinton and Obama administrations. Trump seems to be methodically trying to fulfill his campaign promises, notably regarding the economy and deregulation—the approaches to which will always be contested in our two-party system. His progress has thus far been in stops and starts, partly because of the passivity, and sometimes petulance, of the mundane GOP leadership.

There seems to be a huge conceptual gap between Trump and his most implacable critics on the left. Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of "compassion" (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers. These elite Democrats occupy an amorphous meta-realm of subjective emotion, theoretical abstractions, and refined language. But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials, geometry, and construction projects, where communication often reverts to the brusque, coarse, high-impact level of pre-modern working-class life, whose daily locus was the barnyard. It's no accident that bourgeois Victorians of the industrial era tried to purge "barnyard language" out of English.

In my opinion, Camille Paglia is a national treasure.