President Barack Obama announced on April 24, 2016, in a speech in Hannover, Germany, that he will send 250 more Special Forces personnel to Syria to aid in the conflict against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL).

“They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground,” Obama said, “but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back.”

This will bring the total of U.S. forces in Syria to about 300. He further called on NATO allies to step up the fight to destroy ISIS.

In Syria, ISIS is warring to overthrow longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad, which has created a complex situation, as al-Assad’s overthrow is also an aim of the United States. The U.S. supports extremist groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Muslim Brotherhood in their battle against al-Assad, as revealed by leaked Pentagon reports, but does not support ISIS.

The Syrian Civil War, between the dictator and many rebel groups, has killed 250,000 people and displaced 11 million people. The war has seen many tragic developments, such as bitter conflict in the U.S. over whether to allow immigration of refugees, ISIS genocide against Shia Muslims and to a lesser extent Yazidis and Christians, the starving of Syrian towns by both ISIS and U.S.-backed fighters, and the ISIS terror attack in Paris — revenge for France’s involvement in the war.

In Iraq, nearly 4,100 troops remain, mostly involved in training and defense in the Iraqi government’s battle against ISIS. In the last few years, the number has been increasing a few hundred at a time. A week ago, on Monday, April 18, the Pentagon announced an increase in Iraq of over 200 U.S. troops.

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The Associated Press reported on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, that Sweden’s national security service, SAPO, is investigating possible terror plots after Iraqi authorities warned SAPO of seven or eight ISIS fighters heading to Stockholm to carry out violence in the style of the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

A Swedish security police spokesman told The Sun, “Right now we’re gathering information and intelligence and coordinating with our national and international partners.” SAPO has dispatched agents to Iraq to learn more. Security at airports and train stations has not yet increased, but police are operating at a “heightened state of readiness.”

While this type of information cannot be “dismissed,” SAPO said, it explained these types of concerns arise “quite often” and have yet to come to fruition. While the identity of the alleged plotters is unknown, is estimated that 300 Swedes have ventured to the Middle East to join ISIS since 2013.

CTV News reports that the

Swedish media is also speculating that the celebrations Saturday for Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf’s 70th birthday could be a possible target. Such an event gathers the royal family, government officials and European royal visitors.

While Sweden remains officially neutral, it participated in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the no-fly zone operations of the Libyan Civil War, and joined the coalition against ISIS in January 2015, sending over 100 troops to Iraq to help train Iraqi forces. The International Business Times reported in April 2015,

…the move has been controversial in Sweden, with one terrorism expert suggesting that it could raise the threat level at home.

“It could motivate someone to carry out violent acts to protest,” said Thomas Hegghammer, a terror expert at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment… “There will be more attacks. We can already see a marked increase.”

The terror attack in Paris was revenge for France’s role in the anti-ISIS coalition, according to both ISIS and French intelligence officials, just as the 9/11 attacks in New York were revenge for U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere, according to both Al Qaeda and U.S. military officials. Could Sweden be next?

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Could any of us have envisioned the depths of absolute madness into which the Republican Party would descend during this 2016 primary season? It’s as someone tweeted, “I feel like this is the last season of America and the writers are just going nuts.” Nothing exemplifies this as well as the sexual things — some intentional, some witless accidents that only sound filthy to our filthy minds — that have come out of candidates’ mouths. Here are 5 times the Republican candidates said something disturbingly sexual and deeply unsettling.

TED CRUZ AND RAT SEX

Last month, during a speech in Wisconsin, Ted Cruz was talking about the dirty tricks of Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone, who Cruz said was “a man for whom a term was coined for copulating with a rodent.” But Cruz wouldn’t stop there. He wanted to try analogy. “Well let me be clear,” he continued, “Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.”

A presidential candidate feeling the need to joke about how he has no desire to make love with rival candidates has to be some kind of record low in American politics, but that can hardly be overshadowed by the fact Cruz used the word “but.” He “may be a rat, but…”? So if it was a rat but not Trump, you might think about it? Ted, you sly dog!

WHEN RUBIO DREW ATTENTION TO TRUMP’S DANGLE…

Marco Rubio, desperate to stop Donald Trump’s onslaught in the early contests, started fighting dirty. Channeling his inner frat boy, Rubio called Trump illiterate, mocked his spray tan, and joked that maybe Trump peed his pants. Then Rubio, once hailed as the more presidential-looking and presidential-acting of the Republican field, hit The Donald where it hurt. He said Trump had small hands, “and you know what they say about guys with small hands!” As his surprised audience laughed, he joked, “You can’t trust them!”

Shocking to nearly all political analysts, Rubio’s attack on Trump’s penis did not save his doomed campaign.

…AND TRUMP THOUGHT, “CHRIST, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?”

Donald Trump, who has crushed his opposition from the very beginning because a massive portion of conservative voters love his bigotry and authoritarianism, and overall insanity, seized on the opportunity Rubio offered. It was as if Rubio thought that gasoline would douse the fiery sh*tstorm that is Trump’s candidacy. The Donald assured the nation during a nationally-televised Republican debate that all was well with his Johnson, using his trademarked nearly-incoherent psychobabble:

Look at those hands, are they small hands?… He referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.

When CNN runs an article headlined, “Donald Trump Defends Size of His Penis,” you know it’s all over. R.I.P. America, 1776-2016.

GOTTA BE CAREFUL WHEN SAYING “ON YOUR KNEES”

Ted Cruz made clear what he thought of presidential candidates that aren’t as pious as he: “Any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation,” forcing more liberal opinion writers to decide if they should focus their articles on the smug implication of the superiority and necessity of religious leaders or just how dirty such a statement sounds to anyone who isn’t nine.

The choice wasn’t difficult. Our bad.

P.S. Sorry for all the pics of Ted Cruz.

JEB’S HOT THREESOME

After Jeb’s miserable performance in the first couple primaries and caucuses, he was forced to pull out (LOL). “I’ve had an incredible life [uhhh, is it ending?], and for me, public service has been the highlight of that life,” Bush said. “But no matter what the future holds…tonight I’m going to sleep with the best friend I have and the love of my life.”

The love of his life is clearly Columba, his wife, whom he kissed after saying this. The word is still out on who Jeb’s best friend is, whether it’s a woman or man (Devil’s Threesome, anyone?), why Columba seemed so calm in the face of Jeb’s public admission of their freaky sex life, or how the evening went overall.

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In a story making national headlines, from Think Progress to The Daily Beast, a former counseling student is suing Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, for violating his freedom of religion and expression. Andrew Cash was dismissed from Missouri State’s counseling program after he refused to abide by the terms set by the university for his remedial work, which addressed his determination not to counsel gay couples.

Cash had interned at the Springfield Marriage and Family Institute, a Christian organization, and earned 51 hours of experience when in 2011 Missouri State discovered that SMFI, while offering counseling to individual homosexual patients, refused marriage counseling for gay couples. During this revelation, it was further made known that Cash agreed with this stance and intended to follow it in his professional practice.

Refusing to counsel gay couples is a direct violation of the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics, which Missouri State is required to abide by to keep its accreditation from the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs.

Missouri State required Cash to go through a remedial process to address his stance (according to The Daily Beast, including classes he already took and a self-assessment), and removed SMFI as an approved internship site, saying Cash’s 51 hours there would not apply to his degree. He appealed this latter measure for two years, but by late 2014 the Missouri State counseling department had had enough and, believing Cash unfit for the profession, removed him from the program.

Cash’s lawsuit says his “experience at MSU has been devastating, crushing, and tormenting,” a “living nightmare,” and that he was “targeted and punished for expressing his Christian worldview.” He has “lost countless hours of sleep, and lives with gut-wrenching thoughts and fears about his future and ability to enter the counseling profession, and experiences of emotional grief, anxiety and panic, each day…”

Similar lawsuits at Eastern Michigan University and Augusta State University failed. Courts ruled universities have the right to ensure students abide by the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics.

The Springfield News-Leader writes,

It’s not the first time religious freedom has been cited in a lawsuit against MSU. Emily Brooker sued the university in 2006, accusing the school and a faculty member of violating her First Amendment rights when she refused to sign a letter supporting same-sex adoption. Brooker was a student in the School of Social Work.

Brooker alleged in her lawsuit that faculty members interrogated her for over two hours and asked her questions such as: “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?” and “Do you think I am a sinner?” Brooker made national headlines before reaching a settlement with the university.

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On Monday, May 2, 2016, 94 of the Detroit Public School District’s 97 schools were closed, as massive numbers of teachers called in sick to protest a Saturday announcement that they wouldn’t get any paychecks after June 30. On that date, the emergency district manager told union leaders, about $50 million in emergency state aid will be gone and the deeply indebted district will be broke. Summer school and special education programs will likewise be cancelled if no more aid is received.

The unions encouraged calling in sick (a so-called “sick-out”) because public school teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan. This is one of several sick-outs the unions called since last year, which will likely cause “lawmakers to consider tightening the definition of what constitutes a strike.”

The Detroit Public School District has been poorly funded for a long time for several reasons, from the standard American practice of funding school districts through property taxes (ensuring poor neighborhoods have poor schools) to the low test scores that poor students consistently achieve meaning few federal funds (under programs like No Child Left Behind) to the city’s bankruptcy of three years ago. The Michigan Legislature is considering a $720 million restructuring plan to rescue the district, and today’s protest will likely push the lawmakers along.

The district is overwhelmingly black and poor. With just under 50,000 students, about 84% are black, 12% Hispanic. 80% of students are on the Free/Reduced Lunch Program. Facilities are crumbling, classrooms crowded and ill-equipped. “I want to be able to go to school and not have to worry about being bitten by mice, being knocked out by the gases, being cold in the rooms,” a Detroit student, Wisdom Morales, said earlier this year.

The state as a whole is suffering from both a lack of revenue and the poor decisions of leaders, which devastated public services like schools and water treatment.

Like other states, especially those controlled by Republican administrations, Michigan has accrued large deficits while shifting the tax burden from large corporations and the wealthy onto low- and middle-income earners. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, for example, “dug himself into a $454.4 million deficit,” giving “away billions of dollars in tax credits to major corporations…all while squeezing more from the average citizen – some $900 million more, while corporations paid $1.7 billion less in 2014.”

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