• Who Is “The Surgeon” Alexander Zaldostanov? By Richard C. Young
• Clinton Against Second Amendment By Richard C. Young
• FBI Stats Show More Guns Equal Less Crime By The Editors
• Niman Ranch Sells to Perdue Farms By Debbie Young
• What’s on Your Bucket List? By E.J. Smith - Exclusive: "A Wheel is a Wheel"
• Tax the Rich! By Debbie Young
• Who is Ramzan Kadyrov? By Richard C. Young
• The Answer to Afghanistan By Richard C. Young
• Putin’s Quagmire in Ukraine By Richard C. Young

And who are the Night Wolves? Zaldostanov is the leader of the Russian nationalist biker gang known as the Night Wolves. The 5,000-some-member gang conducts stridently nationalistic rallies loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zaldostanov views his gang as holy warriors and travels widely extolling Russian greatness and warning of Russia’s enemies America, Europe, NATO, “fifth Columnists,” and liberalism in general. Orthodox Christianity is widely promoted in protests and pilgrimages.

For a number of years a wave of right wing nationalism has been sweeping over Europe, perhaps best personified by the traction gained by Front National (FN) and Marine Le Pen in France. Zaldostanov is every bit as dedicated and vocal about nationalism as is Le Pen and has now ascended to a position of considerable prominence, power and public recognition in Russia, with the support of the Kremlin and his buddy Putin.

Zaldostanov’s message appears to run parallel to that of Russian writer Alexander Dugin, of whom I have written often of here (read here, here, here, and here). Both are publicly vocal in their opposition to the governments of America and the Europe, and both of these “pot stirrers” appear to have Putin’s ear.

Given the highly public prodding of both Dugin and Zaldostanov, Russia’s aggressive posture in Ukraine and Syria is not surprising.

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The next president will almost certainly have a chance to nominate one or more U.S. Supreme Court justices. Were Hillary Clinton president, she would attempt to get through another Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan liberal who would put your Second Amendment rights at risk. Americans could face a scenario where the government would call for citizens to turn over their arms to the government.

Reports indicate that in September the FBI’s National Background Check System processed almost 1.8 million firearms-related applications, a new record and nearly a 25 percent increase from the previous high established in September 2012. It is certain that even more guns were sold in September than the background checks data would indicate. This is due to multiple purchases with a single check, along with unreported private sales. Most Americans are strongly pro-Second Amendment. It is hoped they will block a path to the presidency for anti-Second Amendment candidate Hillary Clinton.

Despite rabid calls for gun control at the recent Democratic presidential debate, FBI stats show what author John Lott explained in his 1998 book, More Guns, Less Crime. In the chart below you’ll find the number of background checks performed by the FBI for gun sales, and the number of violent crimes committed in the U.S. from 1999 to 2014. As you can see, as numbers of implied gun purchases have exploded, the number of violent crimes has cratered, directly counter to the idea that guns cause crime.

Would it surprise you that a number of stalwarts in the organic food industry are now owned by big conventional food companies? Stonyfield (yogurt) is now owned by Group Danone, Earthbound Farms is owned by Whitewave, Applegate Farms is owned by Hormel, Honest Tea is part of Coca-Cola, and Cascadian Farms is owned by General Mills. And in the latest merger conquest, Perdue Farms has bought Niman Ranch.

Bill Niman, who founded Niman Ranch to raise animals without the use of pharmaceuticals and chemicals, has complicated feelings about the sale. “Right now I have pretty good feelings about it,” he says. Niman feels that Perdue is capable of adhering to the high standards for treating animals better and farmers as respectably as Niman Ranch has done. But he does worry that Perdue will just try to maintain that reputation just through marketing and that the poultry behemoth will create confusion in the marketplace by putting a spin on things.

Read more from NPR here.

“It’s not how fast you travel, it’s how far you go,” sings my friend Bob Morrison in his recently recorded song A Wheel Is A Wheel.

If you live outside of Nashville, TN you may not know the name Bob Morrison, but you most certainly know his songs. He was the straw that stirred the drink turning Looking for Love into a hit for Johnny Lee—the song featured in the movie Urban Cowboy. He won a Grammy in 1980 for You Decorated My Life, was ASCAP Songwriter of the Year four times, and if you don’t know those songs, then you’ll most certainly recognize a few names from his expansive list of song writing credits.

Over the past couple of years, between playing tennis and golf, Bob has been back in the studio recording music he affectionately refers to as: “The Bucket List Sessions”.

A couple of weeks ago I emailed Bob the version of Way Back Home I previously posted for you, and he wrote back, “If you like Muscle Shoals funk, boy have I got a track for you. I’ll send it when I get it finished.” A few days later I received a few recordings, beginning with the freedom loving: A Wheel Is A Wheel.

I asked Bob for permission to put A Wheel Is A Wheel on our websites for you to listen to. I also asked him who he collaborated with. He said, “My good friend Billy Henderson, a great lyricist and a good tennis player. I did the music and arrangements, he provided the brilliant lyrics.”

Regarding Muscle Shoals, Billy worked at Fame Studio and wrote for Rick Hall, eventually ending up in Nashville where he and Bob met 25+ years ago. Billy has a song, Healing Song, recently recorded by 6 Grammy winners in Louisiana which will be released soon.

“By the way,” Bob wrote, “Billy was a Baptist preacher at age 16, resigned in his 20’s to get into the music business” because he disliked the duplicity of the religion business. “I tease him, this is the classic jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”

I hope you like Bob Morrison’s and Billy Henderson’s A Wheel Is A Wheel as much as I do, because at the end of the day:

If you know where you’ve been,

style is no big deal

Who cares how you get there,

a wheel is a wheel is a wheel

During the Democratic debate last week, the candidates beat the income inequality drum before peddling an endless list of freebies to be paid for by punitive taxes on the rich. The strident progressive cry is that the rich don’t pay enough and our social-welfare programs are too stingy. But as Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner points out, they have it all wrong. In truth, Mr. Tanner writes, the rich  (those who earn about 19% of U.S. income), pay more than 42% of fed income taxes. Furthermore, between the Feds and the states, the U.S. spends nearly $1 trillion on our welfare and anti-poverty programs. “But why let a few facts get in the way of a good narrative?”

Critics of inequality would have us believe that rising inequality is responsible for poverty. But at a time of increasing inequality, world poverty has never been lower. The researchers (World Bank) project that fewer than 10 percent of the world’s population will live in extreme poverty this year.

The Left also believes that most rich people don’t earn their wealth, they inherit it, resulting in a new aristocracy. That was the central thesis of Thomas Piketty’s oft-cited book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In reality, however, roughly 80 percent of American millionaires are the first generation of their families to have that much money. Most of the rich are entrepreneurs who earned their wealth through hard work.

Read more from Mr. Tanner here, who explains why capitalism works but crony capitalism doesn’t.

He is the much loved Chechen leader and buddy of Vladimir Putin. He is also a member of Russian motorcycle gang Nochniye Volki (Night Wolves).

Kadyrov, “wields enormous power in his war-ravaged world-infamous republic, and is the object of a Stalin-like personality cult. He is a man whose fearsome reputation is matched only by tales of his eclectic hobbies and tastes.”

Wherever you turn in Grozny, Chechnya’s bombed- out capital, Kadyrov is there. His bearded face smiles down at you Big Brother style, his penetrating eyes reminding you who is in charge.

Former rebel Ramzan Kadyrov says if Russian PM sent his “death battalion” to Syria in a ground operation, Islamic State would be wiped out within weeks.

Read more here.

Here Kadyrov joins the Night Wolves in an initiation ceremony (Russian only):

Former CIA bin Laden unit chief Michael Scheuer writes, “The only effective U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, then, is to immediately and totally withdraw: stop berating Putin as he tries-but will fail-to defend Russia’s national interests in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan; quietly rebuild the worn U.S. military for use in decisively closing the southern border.”

Dr. Scheuer summarizes the answer to Afghanistan with five key points outlined for readers below:

First, acknowledge that the Afghan war is irretrievably lost. The Joint Chiefs are now headed by a Marine general, Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., for whom truth, courage, regard for his troops’ lives, and frank manliness ought to be second nature, and who has been taught that the best generals know victory when they see it, but also know and admit when they are beaten and prefer to stop the waste that is the only product of reinforcing defeat. He should publicly say what he knows to be true and then resign his post.

Second, welcome and act to immediately exploit the tremendous opportunity to escape Afghanistan presented to the United States by Russian President Putin. Putin already has the Russian military positioned to further intervene in the Ukraine. He also has started what will be a long, costly, and losing war in Syria, a place that holds a potential threat to Russian security because of the thousands of Russian and CIS Muslims – up to 7,000 the Russian media claim — who are fighting there alongside the Islamic State. The real and immediate Islamist threat to Russia and the CIS states, however, is Afghanistan.

Third, recognize that the Afghan threat that Putin’s Russia now encounters is far more formidable than the one from Syria. Afghanistan has a long and relatively undefended border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and each of these Central Asian states — add Kyrgyzstan to the three noted — has a restive and increasingly militant Muslim population; all four also have contingents of their nationals fighting with the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. This is a problem in itself for Moscow, but Russia’s outlook is further darkened by the growing power of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan — note the recent battles in Kunduz — and the fact that much of the currently non-Taliban population of the northern region are ethnic Central Asians, many of whom fought as mujahedin against the Red Army in the Afghan-Soviet War (1979-1992) and still seek revenge on the Russians for their barbarity in that war.

Fourth, conclude that the Taliban’s growing strength in the north is bad enough for Russia, but that the arrival and quick numerical growth and geographic dispersal of Islamic State (IS) forces gives Moscow, the Central Asian regimes, and China a near-term and deeply unsettling nightmare. IS forces, of course, are in Afghanistan to try to displace the Taliban as the primary Sunni Islamist organization in the country and region. They also are there, however, to try to expand the IS’s caliphate into Iran, India, and Pakistan, but most especially into Central Asia and western China. This is a reality that Putin, the Central Asian leaders, and Beijing cannot ignore. They would have to fill the Afghan void created if the U.S. military presence and U.S. funding are terminated because neither the Kabul government nor its military are viable without substantial and prolonged foreign military protection and money.

Fifth, regard any U.S. politician, pundit, reverend, or academic who whines that a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would betray “our Afghan allies” as a person to be netted and packed off to an asylum. The Afghan regime will not fight, cannot govern, stole tens of billions of U.S. dollars, traffics in heroin, and is asking Russia for military and financial assistance. Clearly, the United States can only gain by losing this ally.

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It’s not going as planned in Ukraine for Russia’s Vladimir Putin. As has so often been the case in the past for Russian interventions (and not unlike for the U.S.), Russia now finds itself in a costly and debilitating quagmire. Here NPR outlines the view from Foreign Policy: “Militarily, it is a stalemate. … Economically, the war and occupation of both Crimea and the Donbas (eastern Ukraine) have imposed ruinous costs on Russia. … In sum, Putin’s plans of weakening Ukraine have backfired.”

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