The fall of Ramadi, Iraq 2015 and other thoughts........ http://t.co/AEmbfnA88q
— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) May 22, 2015
The Islamic State terror group now controls over half of Syrian territory after seizing the village and archaeological site of Palmyra Thursday, activists monitoring Syria's civil war said.Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Associated Press the extremists overran the archaeological site, just to the southwest of the modern settlement on Palmyra, shortly after midnight local time.In Damascus, state TV acknowledged that pro-government forces had withdrawn from the town. A Facebook page close to ISIS published a statement Thursday, purportedly from the group, saying "the soldiers of the Islamic State" completed their control of Palmyra. The capture came after government forces collapsed, "leaving large numbers of dead whose bodies filled the streets," it said.
Thursday: Elian Gonzalez is back in the news and a few other thoughts.... http://t.co/mxp07BYihQ
— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) May 21, 2015
“In an ABC News exclusive interview, Elian said his relationship with the former Cuban president is one of friendship.“I am his friend but above all i consider him my father, my grandfather,” Elian said.“Fidel, he is an incredible person. Everyone has his own opinion. It is somewhat difficult to refer to Fidel, because everyone thinks of Fidel as a god or those who rejects him call him the devil. But I’ve known one side of Fidel and what I have left to say is he is a normal person. He is a friend. He’s someone you can share with, you can laugh with.””
Thursday: Elian Gonzalez is back in the news and a few other thoughts.... http://t.co/mxp07BYihQ
— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) May 21, 2015
The last time someone dug a trench through the Isthmus of Panama, the result was declared the greatest wonder of its age. It’s being done again–mountains toppled, earth moved by the millions of tons, oceans connected–and the wonder this time is that anyone notices.
The new locks also operate differently. While the old chambers feature miter gates–which open and close like double doors–the new gates, made in Italy, slide in from one side, like a pocket door. The freshwater from the lake above will rush in and out through cavernous, curving culverts that, as workers complete the finishing touches, feel like something from King Solomon’s Mines. Basins next to each lock will store water for a single reuse, reducing freshwater usage by 7% per passage. The same new locks are also being installed on the Atlantic side, but in the midsection of the isthmus all ships will continue to steam along the original waterway, which has been upgraded.
Curves in the famous Culebra Cut, named for the mountain ridge the original canal had to be cut through, are being widened to ease turns for the bigger ships.
Metal communication towers are going up behind the picturesque lighthouses that string the length of the canal, along which 625 new lights are being installed.
Everything is bigger and more efficient–but also a bit less interesting than in the old canal, like a dull I-95 compared with the kicks of Route 66. But superhighways are what the Seven Seas have become. The number of cargo ships worldwide has more than quadrupled over the past 20 years, to 50,000 vessels carrying $13 trillion in goods each year. In a world economy bound together by supply chains–cars to China, sneakers to Houston–sea travel long ago ceased being leisurely. The canal takes reservations months in advance, collecting a 15% booking fee on a toll that often runs to $400,000 but guarantees passage in no less than 18 hours.
"Marquette University has removed a mural that celebrated Assata Shakur, a convicted cop killer who is on the FBI's Most Wanted list under her birth name, Joanne Chesimard.
The mural, which had been on display in the student union's Gender and Sexuality Resource Center, was taken down Monday after a suspended professor noticed it on the center's Facebook page."
She has already changed her words to match the music of the left on immigration, gay marriage, criminal-justice reform and her ties to Wall Street. Such changes, says Colin Reed, director of the America Rising Political Action Committee, “reinforced all her worst attributes as a candidate and hurt her image among voters of all stripes. [Liberal] voters know that she’s not truly one of them.” Independent voters, on the other hand, “see a desperate politician staking out far-left positions that are outside the mainstream of most Americans.”
Ramadi is another disaster for President Obama http://t.co/hANdeTTI7T via @Scantojr
— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) May 19, 2015
Amtrak carries about 30 million passengers per year. Amtrak does not provide statistics on how many different individuals this represents. However, given that over 11 million passengers rode on the northeast corridor trains which are most suited to commuting and that some people commute daily or weekly on Amtrak trains, it seems likely that the actual number of distinct people riding Amtrak annually is a much smaller number, more on the order of 5 million people.This leads to the question of why Americans taxpayers should subsidize a rail service that only somewhere around one or two percent of Americans actually use. The clear and obvious answer is that they should not be.While Democratic leaders are calling for more federal funding, the problem is not a lack of subsidies but instead that Amtrak's leadership is divided between serving its customers and serving the political benefactors who provide it with about $1.4 billion per year.