$4 Gasoline Returns To California -- May 16, 2015; Well, Sort Of; ISIS Flag Raised Over Ramadi; DOD Says Situation Is "Fluid"

The Los Angeles Times is reporting: $4 gasoline returns -- just in time for the summer driving season.

From GasBuddy:

******************************

Update On Isis Outside of Baghdad

CNN is reporting in the last 24 hours:

The months-long fight for the key central Iraqi city of Ramadi now appears to be going ISIS's way, with the Islamist extremist group capturing police headquarters, the Ramadi Great Mosque and even raising its trademark black flag over the provincial government building.

The ISIS push began Thursday, with armored bulldozers and at least 10 suicide bombings used to burst through gates and blast through walls in Ramadi, according to a security source who has since left the city. Dozens of militants followed them into the city center.

So, the latest offensive began on Thursday evening and looks like it was over by Friday evening. This is the JV team. On its way to Baghdad. The New York Times is reporting the same thing but in greater detail.

The new jihadist assault began under the cover of darkness late Thursday, starting with a wave of suicide attacks by clean-shaven fighters driving armored Humvees and dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms.

As fighters for the Islamic State advanced on Friday, there were reports of massacres. Sheikh Omar Shihan al-Alwani, a tribal leader whose men have been fighting the Islamic State there, said more than a dozen families had been killed in his area of Ramadi, along with about 50 policemen and tribal fighters.

“We asked our fighters to leave their weapons and withdraw,” he said. “Otherwise, we would lose them all.”

Flashback, December 10, 2014: ISIS is stalled, can't take Baghdad -- International Business Times.  However, it should be noted:

The rise of the Islamic State group has prompted Barack Obama to say that ISIL is one of the biggest threats America faces. “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way,” the president said in an address to the nation in September, 2014.

What sets Obama apart is his ideological rigidity and fathomless ignorance....  WSJ, link here.