• Gear Up: Water Filter Showdown By E.J. Smith
• Hillary Clinton and the Law of Unintended Consequences By Debbie Young
• Are the Good Times Really Over for Good? By The Editors
• CNBC Gives Viewers the Full Monty By Debbie Young
• Donald Trump Opposes Free Trade? By Richard C. Young
• SHOUT! Remembering the Isley Brothers By Richard C. Young
• The FBI’s New Ammo By E.J. Smith
• A 20-Year Trail of Smoldering Wreckage By Richard C. Young
• Taki Theodoracopulos on Syria By Richard C. Young

Writing at Loadout Room, Erik Meisner compares the performance of two popular water filtration systems, LifeStraw Mission five-liter water filter and the MSR AutoFlow Microfilter. Meisner writes:

With the water filtration battle heating up, it’s time to pit two of the top contenders against one another and determine who will reign as heavyweight champion. It’s going to be a battle royale. In the blue corner, weighing in at 13 oz., is the LifeStraw Mission five-liter water filter. The LifeStraw Mission is a high-volume, gravity-powered water purifier that removes viruses in addition to bacteria and protozoa to make backcountry water safe to drink.

In the red corner, weighing in at a scant 10.5 oz., is the MSR AutoFlow Microfilter. Now with an even lighter filter cartridge, the AutoFlow Microfilter represents the latest evolution of backcountry hydration, combining filtration, storage, and collection into a single, pump-free system.

Writing in NRO, John Fund explains that, despite the moving pictures of families with young children trudging across Europe, an estimated 70% of migrants arriving are young men traveling alone. One has to ask, is Europe’s migration crisis a problem of border management, with migrants eventually returning to home countries, or is it about relocation and integration of the new migrants into European countries? Will migrants be able to integrate into their new societies? Does anyone believe that having a large number of young unattached men is in itself not a looming crisis?

Mr. Fund continues, “If leaders don’t bring some common sense into the equation, the humanitarian problems could become a geopolitical crisis.”

But there is a lesson here beyond figuring out a better way to balance genuine humanitarian concerns with integrating foreigners into welfare-state societies. In 2010, the Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi warned Europe’s leaders that they could be overwhelmed by migrants if they didn’t develop a coherent joint response. Soon after, Western countries led the campaign to topple him — with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading the charge in the U.S. — and there was much cheering when Gaddafi’s videotaped execution made the news. Libya has been in deep chaos ever since.

Similarly, Western leaders celebrated the 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. even covertly sent aid. But then rebels we took to be potential democratic allies turned, in some cases, into barbaric backers of ISIS. The turmoil in the Arab world has fueled the migrant crisis in Europe. If there ever was a time to show a little humility and some respect for the law of unintended consequences, it’s now, in understanding the roots of Europe’s migrant crisis.

John Fund cautions that Western countries would be wise to consider a new version of an old adage: “Look before you leap into intervention.” Read more here.

Pat Buchanan examines the reality of 11,000 Baby-Boomers going on Social Security each day, and what that will mean for Americans given the demographic and economic realities of today.

“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament.

Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives.

Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future.

The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

Consider. Between 1946 and 1964, 79 million babies were born — the largest, best-educated and most successful generation in our history. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both born in 1946, were in that first class of baby boomers.

The problem.

Assume that 75 million of these 79 million boomers survive to age 66. This means that from this year through 2030, an average of nearly 4 million boomers will be retiring every year. This translates into some 11,000 boomers becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security every single day for the next 18 years.

Add in immigrants in that same age category and the fact that baby boomers live longer than the Greatest Generation or Silent Generation seniors, and you have an immense and unavoidable increase coming in expenditures for our largest entitlement programs.

Benefits will have to be curbed or cut and payroll taxes will have to rise, especially for Medicare, to make good on our promises to seniors.

Thanks to CNBC’s bias, viewers of the 3^rd Republican debate were treated to an outstanding evening in debate politics. The WSJ’s William McGurn writes, “CNBC’s Waterloo had little to do with its moderators’ questions and everything to do with the snark and contempt they came drenched in.”
With the CNBC moderators consistently challenging the anti-big-government assumptions of the Republican candidates, wouldn’t it be helpful if during the next Democratic “debate” the moderators asked questions on what the fundamental role of government should be? Mr. McGurn, under no delusion that they will be asked, offers a sampler of what those questions might sound like:

• Martin O’Malley, you were mayor of a city whose recent riots have highlighted its poverty, broken public schools and lack of opportunity. Fifty years and hundreds of millions of tax dollars after LBJ launched the War on Poverty, cities such as Baltimore have almost nothing to show for it. Given this record, why should anyone think government has an answer?

• Bernie Sanders, you say our system of campaign financing is corrupt and has been co-opted by billionaires, to the point where only the well heeled and well connected can get ahead. Yet over on the GOP side, Ben Carson—a political outsider—gets his funds from mom-and-pop donations and has risen to the top of the polls, while the candidate with the big-time corporate bucks, Jeb Bush, is floundering. So how can you claim our political campaigns need more regulation?

• Mrs. Clinton, back in the 1990s your husband concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed legislation repealing the Glass-Steagall restrictions on affiliations between banks and securities firms, and embraced welfare reform and cuts in capital gains taxes. In 1996, he famously declared “the era of big government is over.”Today you are running on a pro-tax, pro-regulation, pro-spending platform that is almost the opposite of your husband’s economic record. If his policies worked so well in the 1990s, why are you running against them today?
• Here’s one for all three: Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Malley, all of you support an increase in the federal minimum wage. Are any of you aware that the Davis-Bacon Act—the first federal minimum-wage law—was passed in part to prevent southern black workers from taking construction jobs from unionized white workers up north?

What Trump correctly opposes are free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The National Interest notes this while adding that Trump favors draconian punishments for illegal immigrants, says it’s time to get tough with China and Japan on trade, supports a strong U.S. military, claims to have opposed the 2003 Iraq intervention, declares that the U.S. has little to show for its years of intervention within the Middle East, and suggests that if Vladimir Putin wants to engage more deeply in Syria, he’s welcome to it.

The National Interest is outlining much the same position of most Americans today. Although most Americans would not be in favor of draconian punishments for illegals, the majority have the common sense to understand that illegals must never receive a path to citizenship or be allowed to vote. Americans by and large have no problem with family-oriented, hardworking, mostly Christian, Mexicans. Americans, on the other hand, want no part of the largely young, mostly-male, Muslim horde fleeing the Middle East following destabilization caused by America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The National Interest is on the money in emphasizing that American nationalism is a powerful force among Republicans. Nationalism is a force not just in America, but also in Russia, as I have shown in my series of posts on Alexander Dugin and Alexander Zaldostanov. Finally, as Debbie and I have found in our many European trips in recent years, nationalism is a building and powerful force in Europe today, especially as relates to the frightening tsunami of young Muslim males fleeing the Middle East. Nationalists like France’s Front National (FN) leader Marine Le Pen would send this group packing along with their non-assimilating, trouble-making cousins already squatting in France.

Marc Myers writes for the Wall Street Journal:

The Isley Brothers’ “Shout” is one of the earliest and best-known party songs. Immortalized by the frat-house dance scene in the 1978 comedy film “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Shout” was originally conceived by Ronald Isley during a 1959 concert in Philadelphia as a way to extend the audience’s excitement.

Though “Shout” only reached No. 47 on Billboard’s pop chart in 1959, it became the Isley Brothers’ first million-selling record thanks to its enduring popularity and covers by many other artists. The single was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Mr. Isley and his brother Ernie will perform at New York’s Apollo Theater on Nov. 7 as part of a live televised broadcast by the OWN network. Their appearance follows the release in August of a 23-CD boxed set by Sony of all the Isley Brothers’ albums from 1959 to 1983.

And the infamous Animal House version by the fictional band, Otis Day and the Knights:

The FBI is moving back to 9mm and their preferred ammo will be Speer Gold Dot G2 147 or Gold Dot GC. 9mm is my preferred caliber but take note I will not use the FBIs ammo for my compact pistol. ShootingTheBull410 does an excellent job explaining why here:

Read more from Shootingthebull410 here. 
 

“Under The Black Flag”—Taki Takes off the Gloves.

From Taki Theodoracopulos, a founding editor of The American Conservative:   

I have never seen a more ridiculous situation, where the weak and the cowardly but extremely rich—the Saudis and Qataris—have managed to upset the whole balance of power once the military genius of George W. Bush offered them the opportunity by doing away with one of the few strongmen of the region who had managed to keep sectarian violence to a minimum.

The one man who stood in their way was Assad, and of course Iran was a problem too.

Needless to say I am 100% for Assad’s forces in view of his acceptance of Christianity and other religions, where as the former will behead and crucify anyone not adhering to a strict Islamist agenda the moment power lands in their blood dripping hands.  

Let’s face it. We’re in a mess as long as we refuse to deal with Iran, an ancient country that could solve all the problems of the Middle East and rid us of that terrible plague that is Saudi Arabia. Let’s start by telling Bibi to shut the hell up.

A Primer on the War in Syria from Vox.com