You don’t want to run out of ammo. But that’s what could happen to M855 ammo if the BATF’s announced plan to reclassify 223/5.56 (M855) takes hold. There’s nothing like a government planned ban to clear the shelves.
You may recall how hard it was to buy .22LR caliber ammo just a few years ago. Today, supplies are still tight but I’ve been able get a few bricks here and there. Last week I paid around $.08 per round but with shipping it was bumped up to $0.09. I know you can do better than that if you know where to look.
The key for .22LR is to buy local. Try and visit your gun shop on a regular basis and ask them to email you when it’s available. That’s the best way to guarantee you’re getting the best price. Don’t wait for a government ban to clear the shelves on a most valuable commodity.
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 “The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.”
…The Atlantic
Peggy Noonan’s writes of Graeme Wood’s upcoming piece in The Atlantic and calls it “bracing because it is fearless.” The information Mr. Graeme delivers gives political leaders the information needed to understand the disparate situation that may shape U.S. foreign policy for the next decade.
As Ms. Noonan tells WSJ readers, Mr. Graeme argues that ISIS wants to draw America into the fight because it would be a propaganda win for ISIS. ISIS maintains that the U.S.’s intent has always been to embark on a modern-day Crusade against Islam. But it would be a disaster if a U.S. ground invasion failed. The best of bad options is to “slowly bleed” ISIS through air strikes and proxy wars that will “keep the Islamic State from fulfilling its duty to expand.”
“The rise of ISIS, after all, happened only because our previous occupation created space for Zarqawi and his followers,” writes Ms. Noonan. “Who knows the consequences of another botched job?”
Read more here from Peggy Noonan on Mr. Graeme’s timely piece, coming out on the heels of the “violent extremists” summit last week, where Mr. Obama “emphasized Islamic ‘legitimate grievances’ and lectured America on the need for tolerance toward American Muslims.”
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“Every American should have the right to decide not to participate in ObamaCare: If you like ObamaCare and its subsidies, you can keep it. If you don’t, you are free to buy the health insurance that fits your needs,” writes Phil Gramm in the WSJ.
Republicans need to craft a simple bill that is easy to understand and defend, broadly popular, and difficult to attack. The bill needs to guarantee the right of individuals and businesses to opt out of Obamacare and buy the health insurance they choose from any willing seller. Read more here from Phil Gramm, former Republican senator from Texas.
Gramm writes:
By extinguishing coercion, the freedom option would put ObamaCare on the path to extinction. Without the ability to exploit the young and healthy, the Affordable Care Act will collapse under its own funding weight, all but guaranteeing a 2017 revision of the entire law.
Whether in large states like Florida and Texas—with 2.5 million and 1.7 million people receiving subsidies through the federal exchange, respectively—or in small states like North Dakota and Iowa—with 26,000 and 70,000 recipients—Republican governors should have the political high ground in demanding that their citizens be given the right to opt out of ObamaCare.
Restoring this freedom would be what Republicans demand for setting up state exchanges or supporting the restoration of federal-exchange subsidies. Public opinion would strongly favor the Republican position and put pressure on the Obama administration to relent.
Adopting the freedom option will require a level of discipline that Republicans have yet to show in this Congress. It is imperative that the message not be muddled with other amendments that Democrats and Mr. Obama could use as an excuse for opposing it. The leadership that will be required in this effort will test the courage of a Republican congressional majority and Republican governors across the country; victory will require a determination to govern. The alternative will almost certainly be a long or a short path to capitulation.
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In a recent Washington Post interview, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo was asked, “You said you were going to sue Fox News over its allegations that there are “no-go” zones in France—areas where only Muslims can go. Aren’t there places in Paris where people are afraid to go?” Mayor Hidalgo responded, “In Paris, there are no zones where you can’t go for a walk. The situation described by Fox News does not exist. What Fox News presented is a lie.”
Well, not exactly, Mayor Hidalgo. In fact a recently updated report from Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum actually lists 751 Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS). And by my count, nine of the Zones Urbaines Sensibles are in the outer arrondissements of Paris—one each in the 10th, 11th, 17th, 19th; two in the 20th; and three in the 18th. The Middle East Forum website mentions Muslim racism towards the infidels that is never mentioned along with muggings murders and rioting. Just right for “a walk”?
Debbie and I are frequently in Paris. It is true that the arrondissements listed above are not generally considered high traffic tourist destinations, with the 10th and the 11th on the fringes. Although Debbie and I have never walked in the 17th, 18th, 19th or 20th, once said, I would take what mayor Hidalgo says here with a hefty grain of salt. And oh yes, none of the arrondissements listed above is on the left bank popular with American tourists so fascinated by the “Lost Generation” of Hemmingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach.
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You, like me, may go all the way back to the sixties with Boz Scaggs. Boz never seems to rest. And today”s Memphis Boz Scaggs album (yes, it’s available on vinyl) is right up with his best R&B tinged efforts. Having drummer Steve Jordan and guitarist Ray Parker, Jr. on board sure doesn’t hurt this album’s Memphis power. Memphis was recorded and mixed at Royal Recording Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. Enjoy!
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 I was talking with a client the other day who lives in Mississippi. He said Malcolm Butler is the pride of the state. Read this story all the way through, as I did with my kids, and you’ll know why.
The coach plunked down in his seat, immersed in the navy, electric green and wolf gray of the Seattle Seahawks. Alonzo Stevens is not a bashful man, so he shook hands with his Super Bowl-viewing neighbors and declared his allegiance to the Patriots, their cornerback, his player.
Even though he was at a Seahawks party in his native Vicksburg, Mississippi, he was poised to celebrate Malcolm Butler, the undrafted rookie for New England who once played for Stevens at Vicksburg High.
Malcolm’s path to the NFL was fraught with missteps and disappointment, Stevens told them, but his irrepressibility had come to define him as a special talent who was afforded a second chance and parlayed it into a Super Bowl roster spot.
“I just wanted them to know his story,” Stevens explained. “I was so very proud.”
The first half came and went without Butler taking the field for a single snap at cornerback, and the Seahawks fans couldn’t resist.
Read more here.
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With the 2016 elections now on every politician’s mind, what is a politician’s worst nightmare? As always, it is the deathly fear that the voters have finally caught on to the fraud of Republican and Democrat big government!
The post 1914 Big Government sham, running from Wilson through FDR, Johnson, George W. Bush and Obama, has pulled the financial rug from under the middle class. Moreover, a continuous psychopathic foreign policy intervention strategy has made America less safe and less prosperous.
The Cato Institute is clearly America’s home base for reason, logic and a battle plan for the way forward. My friend and Cato scholar Dan Mitchell has a formula for America that will send a chill down the spine of big government proponents like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.
Dan Mitchell wants to shut down the Department of Education, end Federal involvement and intervention, get rid of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Transportation.
Dr. Mitchell writes of how rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic never works and, instead, focuses laser-like on the debacles of Bush’s no-bureaucrat-left behind and Obama’s Common Core. Dan Mitchell closes with this obvious sore point: “To be sure, there’s no realistic way of making significant progress with Obama in the White House.”
I would add the name Jeb Bush to the rogues gallery list of no realistic-wayers.
So where do Americans turn? In Europe, as I have increasingly witnessed in recent years, it is hard line, anti-radical Muslim immigration and strongly nationalistic third-party candidates like FN’s Marine Le Pen who are gaining steady traction against the old-line party dogs like France’s Francois Hollande. Americans need a third-party option where a reform leader can make the case to all Americans that it is long past time to seal our borders against third-world illegals and potential immigrants from the radical Muslim world. Such a candidate would call for an end to the American foreign policy based on intervention and nation building that has made, as Cato’s Chris Preble writes, America less safe and less prosperous. (See my series on Preble and his philosophy here: I, II, III). Such a candidate would marshal in a broad-based states-oriented plan to help close the income equality gap by empowering America’s jobs creators (small business owners) especially in the field of technology and innovation. The U.S. tax code would be dumped with a crossover to a flat tax system that would end the double taxation of dividends, the capital gains tax, and the estate tax. Job growth, and I refer to high-paying job growth, would explode as America’s small business innovators were freed of the shackles of confiscatory taxation and choking federal government regulation.
As American music legend Al Kooper writes in his lyrics “it’s a brand new day,” it could unfold for America.
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 Pat Buchanan has long referred to the Republican Party as the “War Party.” Here Pat outlines the current war mongering approach the Republicans are taking regarding the Middle East. As Pat notes, the lone Republican voice of reason is Rand Paul, who would see Arab not American boots on the ground.
The proper foreign policy for America is to mind its own business. A good start would be pulling American troops off foreign soil and making it clear that the ground troops are not returning. The festering Shia-Sunni religious war is not the business of the United States. The more America becomes involved with the age-old religious battles in the Middle East, the less safe and less prosperous America will be.
Foreign policy scholars at the Cato Institute have been laying out the proper road ahead for decades. Rand Paul was the featured speaker at the recent Cato-sponsored policy conclave in Naples, Florida. Dr. Paul also recently visited with my friend and Cato Institute Vice President Chris Preble. There is no question that Rand Paul has done his homework and is the one man who clearly understands that butting American noses into foreign military conflagrations is a policy that makes America less safe and less prosperous.
Cato’s Dr. Preble has written the definitive leadership book on American foreign policy. I have read The Power Problem
a number of times and have referred to this great book on foreign policy sanity often here at richardcyoung.com. (Read my three parts series on Chris and The Power Problem: I, II, III). Although Republican “War Dogs” have not gotten the message, there is plenty of time for most Americans to get the message. And Rand Paul is doing a good job of pointing the way.
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