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Dissident commanders meet to choose rival Afghan Taliban leader
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Page 6: Politix
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12 21:35 Glenmore [4]
-Land of the Free
The NRA will fall. It’s inevitable
The US Constitution was written the way it is so that factions cannot gain control over national issues. Also, in the case of gun control and gun laws, this professor ignores the plain standard for passing legislation: Consent of the governed. If passed laws fail to meet that standard, they should not be signed into law. Period.

The professor also ignores the fact that tyrants do not have to be single individuals. They can be political factions bent on destroying a less favored political group, in this case, gun owners. In such an instance, gun owners still get one more vote.

This guy can cite government statistics until he is blue in the face, and stack that data as high as the 20,000 gun laws nationwide already on the books, but it doesn't change this single fact: You have a right to keep and bear arms. Congress can't pass laws seizing arms or ammunition, nor can the several states and cities. The right is immutable and longstanding. Any attempt to further take away those rights takes us all one step closer to an armed confrontation.

From TFA:

The recent deadly shooting at an Oregon community college, like so many before it, isn’t likely to lead to new federal laws designed to curb dangerous people’s access to guns. While this understandably frustrates supporters of gun safety legislation, there is reason for them to be hopeful. The National Rifle Association’s days of being a political powerhouse may be numbered.

Why? The answer is in the numbers.

Support for, and opposition to, gun control is closely associated with several demographic characteristics, including race, level of education and whether one lives in a city. Nearly all are trending forcefully against the NRA.

The core of the NRA’s support comes from white, rural and relatively less educated voters. This demographic is currently influential in politics but clearly on the wane. While the decline of white, rural, less educated Americans is generally well known, less often recognized is what this means for gun legislation.

Polls show that whites tend to favor gun rights over gun control by a significant margin (57 percent to 40 percent). Yet whites, who comprise 63 percent of the population today, won’t be in the majority for long. Racial minorities are soon to be a majority, and they are the nation’s strongest supporters of strict gun laws.

An overwhelming majority of African Americans say that gun control is more important than gun rights (72 percent to 24 percent). While the African American population shows signs of slow growth, other racial minority groups are growing more rapidly — and report even greater support for gun control.

The fastest-growing minority group in America is Latinos. Between 2000 and 2010, the nation’s Latino population grew by 43 percent. Hispanics, which make up 17 percent of the population today, are expected to grow to 30 percent of the population in the coming decades.

Gun control is extremely popular among Hispanics, with 75 percent favoring gun safety over gun rights.

Asian Americans also represent a growing anti-gun demographic. Although only about 5 percent of the population today, the Asian American population is predicted to triple over the next few decades. A recent poll of Asian American registered voters found that 80 percent supported stricter gun laws.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov || 10/21/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It's vastly more likely that the university system and the governments wasteful debt schemes to fund it will go.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 10/21/2015 6:48 Comments || Top||

#2  They probably think that a favorable poll for, "Do you think guns are a problem in your community?" is an indication of a preference for gun control.
Posted by: KBK || 10/21/2015 9:17 Comments || Top||

#3  The article also seems to think peoples opinions don't change over time. The black community has bee moving against gun control from what I understand. I suspect the Hispanic community will do the same as they realize 'the good guys' cannot be there to protect everyone from 'the bad guys'.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 10/21/2015 10:26 Comments || Top||

#4  Since "gun control" was first instituted to keep free blacks from protecting themselves and their families from KKK and Democrat (but I repeat myself) attacks/lynchings, and Jim Crow laws were more of the same, I presume anyone who approves of taking guns from citizens is racist and wants blacks to die in large numbers.
Posted by: Barbara || 10/21/2015 14:22 Comments || Top||

#5  If only the stupid party would say that everytime gun confiscation comes up.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 10/21/2015 16:59 Comments || Top||


Arabia
A Possible Coup in Saudi Arabia Signals the End of US Dominance in the Mideast
HuffPost

Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 || 10/21/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Salt and popcorn just to cover the bases.
Posted by: BrerRabbit || 10/21/2015 18:37 Comments || Top||

#2  I fail to see the connection.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/21/2015 18:43 Comments || Top||

#3  King Salman (Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud) has been in the hospital since June 2015.

Huffpo is late coming to the party.
Posted by: lord garth || 10/21/2015 19:19 Comments || Top||

#4  "Salt and popcorn just to cover the bases."

I've order an extra boxcar-load of popcorn, #1 Brer.

At the rate the world is going to sh!t, I'd better make that my standard order from now on.
Posted by: Barbara || 10/21/2015 21:52 Comments || Top||


Europe
Merkel's Muslim Madness

German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that refusing to take in Muslim migrants is a "danger for Europe." Merkel as usual had it backward. It's her program of taking in Muslim migrants that represents the gravest threat to the freedom and future of Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Merkel may have already doomed Germany. The Bild newspaper published a leaked secret government document estimating that the number of migrants invading Europe this year might reach 1.5 million.

And that bad news gets much worse because the document estimates that each migrant will bring in as many as eight family members once they're settled in, bringing the year's true total to 7.36 million.

That's almost 10 percent of the population of Germany. In just one invasion.

And the migrants are mostly young men entering a rapidly aging country whose young male population is under 5 million. Germany's Muslim population already approaches 5 million. The median age of Germany's Muslim population is 34, while the median age for the overall population is 46.

Merkel has rapidly sped up the rate at which Germany's young male population becomes Muslim.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/21/2015 15:53 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Merkel's chances of politically surviving this winter are not very high.
Posted by: European Conservatives || 10/21/2015 16:39 Comments || Top||

#2  One wonders what happens with the 75% of these guys who are young, male and single. Lets assume they have trouble marrying German wives. Then what?
Posted by: Iblis || 10/21/2015 16:45 Comments || Top||

#3  I suggest gay marriage
Posted by: European Conservatives || 10/21/2015 16:48 Comments || Top||

#4  Does the German system provide for no - confidence votes?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 10/21/2015 16:54 Comments || Top||

#5  They will import wives from the middle east and suddenly, pop including the Turks already in Germany you will start to see white flight and fighting in the streets.

Merkel has done nobody any favors with her misplaced empathy.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 10/21/2015 16:59 Comments || Top||

#6  Rambler yes, Merkel can be removed from office with a simple majority of the Bundestag, but only if another candidate is elected.

I could see that in a few months. In only 5 weeks almost half a million "refugees" crossed the border. Yesterday alone 18000. This can't go on.

And yes, most are young able-bodied determined men, not families with cute children.

I'm not into (Syrian) refugee bashing. I've met quite a few of them, heard their stories and many have been through a lot. But the current situation is not sustainable.
Posted by: European Conservatives || 10/21/2015 17:09 Comments || Top||

#7  #2 Read 3rd para.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/21/2015 17:11 Comments || Top||


Great White North
The triumph of drivel
"While Mr Trudeau is the product of two political families -- his father was prime minister -- he came to politics late, after working as a snowboard instructor."

A friend in Washington ping'd me this webpage snip from the New York Times this morning, together with his condolences. It captures, perhaps, more adequately than the editors realized, the mindset of our prime minister-elect.

We are in a new political era, not only in Canada I'm afraid. I think of Obama in USA, Trump and Sanders rising; Corbyn across the water; the various "national front" and regional separatist parties now topping the polls in Europe; governments like Syriza's re-elected in Greece.

What do they all have in common?

Ideologically, one might say they are all over the map. Moreover, self-serving malice and incompetence are normal in politics; it would be unreasonable to present either as an innovation. I am not looking for the kind of commonplace that applies to politicians in all places and times.

Yet we were once dealing with a class of political tradesmen who had clawed their way up the ranks. They arrived in office with some notion of how things work. In the case of Canada's outgoing prime minister, there was some appreciation of economics, or accountancy. Much as I despised his Liberal predecessors, they also knew what a budget was, and could discern differences between large and small numbers. The elder Trudeau, genetically half-Scotch like me, was a notorious tightwad with his own money; his contrasting extravagance with the public purse showed that he was at least sharp enough to tell them apart.

By extension, these "old style" politicians were also mentally fitted out with clues to what other departments of government did, or tried to avoid doing. There was a certain "professionalism," a painfully-acquired knowledge of the ropes, and how to pull them. Prime Minister ChrĂŠtien, for instance, I despised as a man, in a personal way, given dealings between us; but I could admire him as a political craftsman. Many others, likewise, including Harper most of the time. Cynical or sleazy they might be, but some knowledge of "the system" was de rigueur. The elder Trudeau had spent most of his adult life preying at the edge of the Dominion bureaucracy; he (alas) knew what he was doing when he went in to ravage Canada's justice system.

Now we have "airheads." The term is perhaps over-colloquial, but I think it best expresses the quality our new leaders share, wherever they might fall on the old left-to-right spectrum. While some (like the younger Trudeau, or Bill Clinton's wife) come from political families, or have had (as Corbyn) a life-long obsession with madcap political schemes, the connecting bits are missing in their overview of governance. Mrs Clinton's embarrassments with email make a good example. The shocking thing is not that she broke secrecy regulations that have landed lesser government officials in gaol. It is that she truly did not know any better.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/21/2015 05:03 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  OTOH, it was the "professionals" who created the cultural/political morass that birthed these monstrosities.
Posted by: charger || 10/21/2015 20:01 Comments || Top||


Canada Slits Its Wrist, Elects Barking Moonbat Justin Trudeau
Now all of North America has leftist governments. Gawd help us.
Moonbattery] Pamela Geller tells us what this election means regarding Islam's war against the West in more specific terms:

1) Trudeau will almost immediately accept 25,000 Syrian refugees. here

2) Trudeau will almost immediately normalize relations with Iran and end all military operations against ISIS.... here

3) Trudeau will deactivate Bill C-24 that removes the citizenship Canadians who are terrorists.... here

4) Trudeau will repeal part of the anti terrorist legislation Bill C-51.... here

5) Trudeau will give your piece of crap President [0bama] another avenue to attack Israel via the G8, since Harper will no longer be there to block Obama's anti Israel policy......here
Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 || 10/21/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  New PM Trudeau to Obama: Canada's Islamic State combat mission to end
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 10/21/2015 0:44 Comments || Top||

#2  I read somewhere that Canada was committed to buying 65 F-35's. Is that something that Trudeau can renege on?
Posted by: Raj || 10/21/2015 0:57 Comments || Top||

#3  Oh Canukistan, Canukistan, your Canukistan.
I'm sure President Trump will look back on this a laugh. Good thing Canada has oil, they are going to need it this winter. I'm going long on razor wire and land mines.
Posted by: Chaith Oppressor of the Lutherans1517 || 10/21/2015 1:57 Comments || Top||

#4  Every day, in every way, the world is becoming a darker place.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/21/2015 3:20 Comments || Top||

#5  Not even global warming can/will (or would want to) save them now.
Posted by: junkiron || 10/21/2015 3:37 Comments || Top||

#6 
Posted by: Vinegar Thath7626 || 10/21/2015 5:16 Comments || Top||

#7  They voted for it. I hope they get it, good and hard.
Posted by: Ebbart Glererong5900 || 10/21/2015 5:38 Comments || Top||

#8  @#2...New Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has pledged to open a new tender to replace his country's aging fleet of fighter jets, dumping the F-35 program.
Posted by: Classer || 10/21/2015 6:14 Comments || Top||

#9  Harper's crony capitalism hurt him. Not that Trudeau will be any better, but he's a 'protest' until he proves otherwise.
His administration's changes to offshore oil royalty distribution helped cost him virtually all the votes in Newfoundland (not that there are that many there.) BC is mostly Vancouver, and acts like Seattle. Quebec is French and could never support Harper. All Harper could keep was the big oil province of Alberta and a respectable minority (anecdotal, haven't seen the actual number) of Ontario & the rest of the Plains and Maritimes. Plus, Trudeau is a pretty boy and the kiddies seem to like that.
Posted by: Glenmore || 10/21/2015 10:14 Comments || Top||

#10  Kind of a Canadian Kennedy, huh?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 10/21/2015 12:08 Comments || Top||

#11  Ah, geez - I remember the first Trudeau iteration. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara || 10/21/2015 14:16 Comments || Top||

#12  Is his mom the one who smoked pot with the Rolling Stones?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 10/21/2015 14:33 Comments || Top||

#13  EU, yep.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 10/21/2015 14:37 Comments || Top||

#14  Justin Bieber next?
Posted by: European Conservatives || 10/21/2015 19:00 Comments || Top||

#15  Better than Gary.
Posted by: KBK || 10/21/2015 20:21 Comments || Top||

#16  I guess it's Garry.
Posted by: KBK || 10/21/2015 20:22 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
The PTI's newest mantra
[DAWN] THE PTI now plans to go to international forums to amend what it describes as a "stolen electoral verdict". One thought the rigging controversy would be over after the NA-122 by-election. But the PTI is certainly not willing to give up. Refusing to accept the result, the party now wants to take the battle to the international arena.

Former governor Chaudhry Mohammed Sarwar, who has emerged as the second-most powerful person in the PTI hierarchy, says he will raise the issue of "new rigging techniques of the PML-N" with the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
and the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
. Surely, there is no limit to this absurdity. One wonders what this "new rigging technique" is all about and why it requires international attention.

What does the PTI expect these multilateral agencies to do? Fix the polls for next time? One cannot expect such a ridiculous stance from a serious political party. This mindless agitation and histrionics cannot take the party anywhere. The move to raise the issue of alleged electoral rigging at international forums exposes the party's irrational political behaviour.
Posted by: Fred || 10/21/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan



Who's in the News
44[untagged]
5Taliban
5Govt of Pakistan
3Islamic State
2Govt of Syria
1al-Nusra
1Hamas
1Hezbollah
1Baloch Liberation Army
1al-Qaeda in North Africa
1Govt of Iran

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Two weeks of WOT
Wed 2015-10-21
  Dissident commanders meet to choose rival Afghan Taliban leader
Tue 2015-10-20
  ISIL child training camp discovered in Istanbul
Mon 2015-10-19
  Yemen govt agrees to talks with Houthis, Saleh
Sun 2015-10-18
  Senior al-Nusra commander killed in Syria airstrike
Sat 2015-10-17
  Saudi forces kill gunman after Shiite site attack
Fri 2015-10-16
  Taliban Shadow District Governor Killed In Takhar
Thu 2015-10-15
  Champ to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, officials say
Wed 2015-10-14
  ISIS confirms killing of number two in U.S. air strike
Tue 2015-10-13
  Four terrorist attacks rock Jerusalem over 12 hours
Mon 2015-10-12
  22 'militants' killed in N. Waziristan air strikes
Sun 2015-10-11
  ISIS leader al-Baghdadi's convoy hit by air strike in Iraq
Sat 2015-10-10
  Stabbing attack at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, 3 policemen wounded
Fri 2015-10-09
  Military Begins House-To-House Searches in Kunduz
Thu 2015-10-08
  Russia Fires Cruise Missiles in Syria as Assad Begins a Ground Attack
Wed 2015-10-07
  Five arrested in western Sydney over terrorist attack outside police HQ


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