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  Dolo...I love you long time, brother, but that's not exactly how it all went down.   Whoever that guy is in the video is right that Islam has been on the march since the time of Muhammad.  After Muhammad consolidated Islam in what we now call Saudi Arabia, they kept expanding after his death, going around the Byzantine Empire, but taking most of North Africa.  Great pic of it here, and if you look at it you can see that it’s very similar to what ISIS is trying to get done.  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Age_of_Caliphs.png   At this point Islam as a hybrid religion/empire were so widespread that they actually took over most of the Iberian Peninsula and pushed into France, until they were stopped and rolled back at the Battle of Tours in 732 where Charles “the Hammer” Martel basically saved the rest of Europe from becoming Islamic.  This also serves to rally Christians against Islam.    So, we can safely say that Islamic expansion has been a thing for a while.  Not that it was any different from most countries back then, they were just very organized and efficient.   They did force conversion of Christians in the lands they conquered though,  and it also served to scare and demonize those Christians in lands that Islam hadn’t made it to.  So I consider that era the real beginning of the religious wars.      Fast forward to the Crusades…   Pope Urban II had various reasons for calling for the First Crusade that historians debate, but call for it he did in a very deliberate manner in his speech at Clermont in 1095.  All this enlightenment of love and peace Christianity has apparently wasn’t there yet by the accounts of the speech.  The remission of sins was promised for anyone who went as a recruiting tactic.  One of my history professors is in the camp that the Seljuk Turks greed in charging Christian pilgrims to view their holy sites was a big enough factor, and since enough modern wars come down to money reasons, that’s easy enough for me to believe as a major contributing reason.  Another reason is that the warrior caste of Europe (knights and such) was fighting each other too much, and the Church wanted to give them an outward target to focus on.  Since that happens in modern day times as well, easy enough to believe it happened then.  Another theory has a plea from the Byzantine Emperor who had to deal with the ever-encroaching Islam on their borders, but that had been going on for a while.  Regardless of the reasons, after it all got started, the primary goal became the reacquisition of the Holy Land for Christians.  Might as well if you’re going to walk or ride all the way there, right?   Not exactly the defensive war he tried to make the Crusades out to be, and damn sure not trying to "free their Christian brothers and sisters from Jihad" since it came 400 years after Islam conquered what he deemed to as the "Christian Middle East."   Anyway, the barbarism of the Christian Crusaders is pretty well established.  On the way to the Middle East, the Crusaders who travel through modern day German actually victimized Jews along the way as well.  This was never an official policy of the Church, just something the Crusaders did.  Maybe they hadn’t read the message of love Jesus preaches in their bibles yet, who knows.  Wikipedia actually has a decent read on it if you want to catch up on this side story.  Once the Crusaders got to Jerusalem, the massacres that took place there are easily a matter of historic record, only their intensity is debated, though any serious historian doesn’t deny it was brutal even by the standards of the day, with more anti-Semitism when they burned down a synagogue with Jews sheltered inside.  That was the First Crusade.  And from there sprung the tales of how Christianity wanted to destroy Islam, because at the time it was more or less true, but they only had the mission and force to do what they did.   The second crusade was no less violent, but saw the Muslims regain control of the Holy Land.  The Crusaders did manage to take the Iberian Peninsula in a secondary front, however.   The third crusade was a counteroffensive by the west, with Richard I (Lionheart) fighting well enough to force Saladin to work out the Treaty of Jaffa, where pilgrims were given safety to visit the Holy Land again.   The 4th-6th Crusades I’m not that spun up on, though I know they were as much internal as external.    Guy in the video said that the Crusades were short and ended centuries ago. They actually lasted from 1095 until 1244 in the Middle East when Jerusalem was captured again by Muslims and that stayed the norm until World War I.  To Islam, our meddling in the region is the modern day equivalent, never mind the geopolitical realities behind our presence there.  He also mentioned tried to compare the amount of battles, but since the Crusades were expeditionary in nature, and Islam's march were the full expansion of an empire, that's not anywhere an apt comparison.    So yeah, that guy in the video isn't exactly an honest broker on all this.

  I'd give your son my business if I was close, but I'd be looking to get this fixed in the Murfreesboro/Smyrna area.

  Replaced?  Umm...unless that comes with an oil change, I'll guess never.  It's a 2002 Ford Ranger, and I'm closing on 80,000 miles if that helps assess the situation.   So, at a decent repair shop, I'm looking at what, $120-$150?

  My SD3G came in last night.  Snagged it from Primary Arms for $182, which made me a happy boy!

  I've been telling people that for a while now.

Since I'm not a car guy at all, I was hoping some of you can help me out here.    My truck has some kind of squealing for lack of a better word every time it rains.  No idea what it is, what needs to be done, or how much it's going to cost me.  Any input would be appreciated.

So, what did I miss?  Aside from the word terrorism being misused and overused as per usual.

Beat it up at the range, use CLP to wipe down the exterior after.  Repeat many, many times, and any lower will be smooth as your face after shaving for the first time in a week.

The same logic behind the miniscule stats representing a problem needing solved were used in the push for voter ID.

  Yeah, it's more a rough idea than anything.   Do you think a single TICS background check transaction/confirmation code could be used on multiple 4473 forms if the person makes multiple purchases at the show?

I know this idea will be a non-starter for the group here, but there is a fix for this that can keep the gun shows, and take away the liberal talking point of a "loophole" being present.    TBI checks are $10.  Whoever is responsible for putting on the gun show has to have an FFL, and say five computers to run checks on people who want to purchase a firearm at the show where they can charge the $10 there, or more if they want to recoup costs.  See a gun you like, agree to buy it, then go to a counter near the front, get your check, and have a confirmation number that can be put on block 21b of the 4473, and that gun, and any others you buy at the show can be on the same 4473.    Not saying I'd advocate it or want it mandated, but I'm a big fan of taking an opponents gripe and proposing a solution they can't talk around.

If gun shows had anything worth going for, I'd be upset about this.  But as it stands, this is like getting upset that banks have less people working as tellers when the ATM works just fine.

Rain is annoying, but whatever.  I'm not in the Army anymore, so I can use an umbrella.  I wish it was snow though.  Then I could get the entertainment of people losing their minds. 

Sad that on the surface ISIS has more gun freedom that we do, huh?

  Same here.  I even kept one I picked up in my truck with a bandoleer of mags during the invasion until my wad of a platoon sergeant told me to get rid of it a few months later.  Apparently my reasoning that it would have been good backup if the SAW ever went down or ran out of ammo wasn't good enough for him.  I'm guessing it's still at the bottom of the Tigris where I chucked it.

  I've had some kind of credit monitoring since I left the Army, but I knew that information was as secure as the lowest bidder could make it.    The fingerprints aren't a big deal.  Best guess, the Chinese want to have them for their own databases to be able to check for our spies in their country.

  My ex-GF is a VA nurse and got a letter as well.  Let's just say she's less than thrilled about her kids info being out there for someone to exploit.   I tried to explain to her that there are 21 million people in the same boat, and that the most likely intent was to find info that can be used to blackmail people with access to classified material, which isn't her.  Needless to say that didn't calm her down much.   

  Hey, I've had a Browns WR score fifty-some points before.  Josh Gordon was on my roster a few years ago when he was awesome like that and those 50 points won me a game...so it could happen.   But yeah, I don't know what happened this week.  Hopkins and Julio Jones both having slow weeks was an anomaly and Witten hasn't connected with Romo now that he's back like he used to.  Not exactly the momentum I want to carry into the playoffs, but if they have to have bad weeks, let it be now and not later.

Exactly. Can't have people thinking my impending title isn't 100% legit.

I saw that we had no trade deadline, so I put one in retroactive to last Thursday. Not like we traded much, but wanted to cut it off with the playoffs starting next week.

  How about $389.99 before shipping without a mount... http://www.primaryarms.com/trijicon-mro-2-moa-adjustable-red-dot-matte/p/kt-mro-c-2200003/?kc=HOLIDAY&utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_content=SLOT_8&utm_campaign=15-12-Ad6_Cyber_Monday&_bta_tid=3.cFU.CLN2bQ.Ej74.Ar0-xw..A3vqWA.b..l.BStr.n...ndrtvA

  Might get banned if I put up my true feelings expressed in an avatar...lol.

Is this like how they (and Republicans) claimed that encryption was to blame for planning the attacks?

When did ESPN get a political bend?  I must have missed that.   As to the financial aspect of it, ESPN's losing money from cord cutters, but they are also losing money because they spend like drunken sailors at a port of call.  Almost $2 billion a year for Monday Night Football, which has had some really average at best games lately.  Case in point, this weeks match-up between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens.  I don't even know how that looked good when the schedule was made, let alone now that both teams are in the bottom of the heap.  They need some serious belt tightening, and I'd start by reducing the amount of on air "analysts" by no less than 50%.  They have way too many talking heads on their air.  Also, the $125 million revamp of the SportsCenter set was an absurdity. 

There's also a bit of culture difference between the two countries.