Last Call For Trumping Your Logic

How Donald Trump's mind works:

1. "Illegal" immigrants are criminals.
2. Inner-city black people are criminals.
3. Therefore, black people are "illegal" immigrants.

“You know, a lot of the gangs that you see — this doesn’t hopefully pertain to you guys so much — when you look at Baltimore, when you look at Chicago, and Ferguson a lot of these areas,” Trump said on FM Talk 1065AM on Thursday. “You know, a lot of these gang members are illegal immigrants. They’re gonna be gone. We’re gonna get them out so fast, out of this country. So fast.”

Trump was appearing to discuss his recent immigration plan ahead of an appearance Friday at Ladd Peebles Stadium, which has a maximum capacity of 50,000.

He's saying this in Alabama, of course.  Really not sure what's worse, his rampant xenophobic spew or his complete lack of knowldge of how people of African descent arrived in America. (PS, our ancestors weren't "immigrants".)

Good luck with that, Donny.

Greek Fire: Tsipras Steps Aside

With Germany voting to approve the first payment in the Third Great Greek Bailout, PM Alexis Tsipras was allowed to stay until the check cleared today before his Syriza party made it clear that his time was over.

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is set to call a snap election for 20 September, according to Greek media. 

Mr Tsipras has faced a rebellion within his ruling hard-left Syriza party over a new bailout deal which has been agreed with international creditors. 

Greece received the first €13bn ($14.5bn) tranche on Thursday, allowing it to repay a debt to the European Central Bank and avoid a messy default. 

But the austerity measures needed for the deal angered many in his party. 

Mr Tsipras had to agree to further painful state sector cuts, including far-reaching pension reforms, in exchange for the bailout - and keeping Greece in the eurozone. 

The overall bailout package is worth about €86bn over three years. The payment of the first tranche was made on Thursday after the bailout deal - Greece's third in five years - was approved by relevant European parliaments. 

Mr Tsipras is to make a televised state address later on Thursday. 

He is set to submit his resignation to the president to clear the way for the elections, the media reports said. 

Energy and Environment Minister Panos Skourletis said on state TV: "The certainty is that the need for elections has arisen."

It was a done deal and apparent ever since that Tsipras convinced enough in the Greek parliament to vote for the bailout package that he would in exchange fall on his sword, and tonight he does just that.   The alternative was a vote of no confidence that he clearly would have lost, and so after 8 months the tale of the man elected to stand up to the Troika ends with his complete defeat.

We'll see where Greece goes from here, but the idea that things will be better after a month from now is silly.

Leading The Way

The Army is expected to graduate the first two women from Ranger School in Fort Benning, Georgia this week, as the Pentagon is set to open a variety of combat jobs to women across the US military.

For more than 120 days, Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver have ground it out at Ranger School, the Army’s famously difficult school designed to build elite leaders capable of withstanding the rigors of combat. They’ve withstood fearsome weather, exhausting hikes, sleepless nights and simulated combat patrols designed to test their reaction time, teamwork and tenacity under fire. 

On Friday, the two women will become the first female soldiers ever to graduate from the course at Fort Benning, Ga., receiving the coveted black and yellow Ranger Tab alongside 94 male counterparts. Griest, a military police officer from Orange, Conn., and Haver, an Apache helicopter pilot fromCopperas Cove, Tex., are among a group of 20 women who qualified to attend the first gender-integrated Ranger School beginning April 20, and the only two female soldiers to complete it to date. 

The graduation of Haver and Griest, both in their 20s and alumnae of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., increases pressure on the Army to integrate women into more combat jobs. They have not previously been identified by the Army, but The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia were able to do so after observing Ranger School training several times this year. 

Ranger School was opened to women for the first time in April as the Army assesses how to integrate women into more jobs in combat units across the service. That followed a January 2013 decision by senior Pentagon leaders to open all jobs to women, with the services granted until this fall to make recommendations on whether anything should remain closed. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter is expected to rule on each request by Jan. 1.

Don't care who you are, getting through this training is an achievement for the ages.  I freely admit that I wouldn't last 30 minutes and these soldiers survived for months and didn't break.  Rangers Lead The Way is their motto, and these two soldiers are certainly proving that.

Well done.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea has exchanged artillery fire with North Korea as tensions have remained high after two South Korean soldiers were injured by landmines earlier this month.
• Infections of Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, have spiked in Saudi Arabia as an outbreak in a Riyadh hospital has infected 46 and killed three.
• US military researchers are working with law enforcement to neutralize commercial drones and track down their operators based on the number of incidents involving drones.
• Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate is claiming responsibility for a car bombing of a security building in Cairo that has injured 29.
• Retailer Target has reached a $67 million settlement with Visa for the 2013 security breach that compromised 40 million credit cards compromised.