Obama's Iraq Plan Has a Killer Flaw—and Airstrikes Alone May Not Save It  —  The U.S. gambled on local militias to keep ISIS in check.  The president's authorization of airstrikes is an admission that bet didn't pay off.  —  Friday morning, with a humanitarian mission already underway …

Smiling Young White People Make App for Avoiding Black Neighborhoods  —  Is there any way to keep white people from using computers, before this whole planet is ruined?  I ask because the two enterprising white entrepreneurs above just made yet another app for avoiding non-white areas of your town—and it's really taking off!

Don't Give Booker a Pass  —  Cory Booker may be the most puzzling man in the Senate.  We don't know where he lives.  We don't know whom, if anyone, he lives with.  And he's been caught in lie after lie about his heroics.  Yet, this enigma of a man has emerged as the king of odd-couple bromance …

The Big, Long, 30-Year Conservative Lie  —  Inequality, conservatives insist, is natural.  Trying to combat it will slow growth.  Well, guess who now says otherwise?  Standard and Poor's.  —  First came Occupy Wall Street, and its pitch-perfect slogan on inequality: “We are the 99 percent.”

Our Lonely First Duffer  —  What Barack Obama's golf game tells us about his presidency.  —  To many of us who play golf and generally suck at it—that's me, and most others—it is less a game than a subtle form of torture, a walking stress position.  Other sports may be more physically taxing …

America's Moral Obligations in Iraq  —  Which politician uttered the following words: “Do we sit on the sidelines and watch an entire people be slaughtered or do we marshal military forces and move in quietly to put an end to it?”  John McCain?  Joe Lieberman?  Scoop Jackson?  Wrong.

Inequality Is a Drag  —  For more than three decades, almost everyone who matters in American politics has agreed that higher taxes on the rich and increased aid to the poor have hurt economic growth.  —  Liberals have generally viewed this as a trade-off worth making …

Cease-Fire in Gaza Expires, and Strikes Resume  —  JERUSALEM — As a 72-hour truce in Gaza expired at 8 a.m. Friday, Palestinian militants fired barrages of rockets into Israel and the Israeli military responded with airstrikes, one of which killed a 10-year-old boy, according to relatives.

Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing A**hole  —  [Editor's note: Every Wednesday New York City's own Andrew W.K. takes your life questions, and sets you safely down the right path to a solution, a purpose or — no surprise here — a party.  Need his help?  Just ask: AskAWK@villagevoice.com]

Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures  —  War zones are not easy places to collect statistics.  —  In the Gaza conflict, most news organisations have been quoting from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which leads a group of humanitarian organisations known as the Protection Cluster.

Donald Trump Deletes Tweet With Huge Factual Error  —  Either Donald Trump is having second thoughts about a political endorsement or he's once against struggling to accept that he's been proven wrong.  —  The smart money is on the latter, unless the reality television star had a sudden …

Wolfowitz: We ‘won’ the Iraq War  —  Paul Wolfowitz, a former senior George W. Bush administration official and one of the chief Iraq War architects, said on Tuesday that the U.S. “won” the war in Iraq.  —  When asked his thoughts about the current situation in Iraq and whether the war was a mistake …

Mitch McConnell's wife sits on the board of a group working to kill the coal industry Yahoo News 1 hr ago  —  For months, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell has accused his Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, of engaging in a “war on coal,” casting her as an outright enemy of one of the state's most vital industries.

Probate candidate's husband admits to history with white supremacy movement  —  The husband of a Plainfield attorney running for a probate judge seat was a member of a prominent neo-Nazi group for several years, according to watchdog groups, and currently maintains a pro-white online blog.

The Democrats' Goldwater  —  Elizabeth Warren leads the party's leftward march.  —  Republicans had Barry Gold-water.  Democrats now have Elizabeth Warren.  What do they have in common?  Years back, he pointed the way for his party, and now she's doing the same thing for hers.

CNN Poll: Trust in government at all-time low  —  Washington (CNN) - Four decades after President Richard Nixon resigned, a slight majority of Americans still consider Watergate a very serious matter, a new national survey shows.  But how serious depends on when you were born.

The U.N. Handmaiden of Hamas  —  The relief agency in Gaza, financed in part by the U.S., has become a patron of Palestinian grievance.

Tropical Storm Iselle Update: Only Second Landfall On Record in Big Island of Hawaii; High Winds, Flooding Rain Continue (FORECAST)  —  Tropical Storm Iselle in a Friday morning update from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, became only the second tropical storm on record to landfall on the Big Island of Hawaii early Friday morning.