“Hello, thank you for calling Comcast, my name is Kim, how may I help you today?”

Games afoot.

Via VOA:

Iran isn’t alone in issuing dire threats against Saudi Arabia — the Islamic State has ratcheted up a propaganda campaign against the Gulf kingdom’s ruling family, denouncing them for siding with the U.S.-led coalition against the jihadists and urging followers to oust them.

“The Islamic State has exerted much effort in the last couple of weeks to attacking Saudi Arabia in an extensive and well-coordinated media campaign,” says Marwan Khayat, an analyst at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington-based group that monitors jihadist propaganda.

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Wonderful.

Via San Diego Radar:

Among the several dozen Pakistani and Afghan men who have entered the U.S. illegally, coming into San Diego from Tijuana, two were found to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a letter sent by U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter to the Department of Homeland Security.

Muhammad Azeem and Muktar Ahmad, both in their 20s, surrendered to U.S. Border Patrol agents in September, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One was listed on the Terrorist Screening Database for “associations with a known or suspected terrorist. The other was a positive match for derogatory information in an alternative database,” according to Hunter’s letter.

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The definition of irony.

Via WJLA:

An ABC7 News crew car was broken into while attending a press conference held by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Cathy Lanier to discuss a Task Force created to fight robberies.

According to ABC7 News reporter Stephen Tschida, thieves tore through the news vehicle early Wednesday afternoon and a culprit smashed a window out of the car and stole a cache of equipment.

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Flying pig alert.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters, look at Europe.

Via Washington Examiner:

The number of U.S. newborns named “Mohammed” has jumped 100-fold since 1964, one way of determining the growth of second and third generation Muslims, according to a leading immigration watchdog.

Based on Social Security Administration baby name figures, there were only 29 babies born with one of the spellings of Mohammed in 1964. That has surged to 2,931.

The Center for Immigration Studies used the statistics to determine the growth of the Muslim community, a statistic the federal government doesn’t chart.

“Given the fact that some U.S.- or European-born Muslim terrorists (such as Syed Farook in San Bernardino) have been menacing Western societies, are there any statistics on the growth of the second-generation Muslim populations?” blogged CIS Fellow David North.

He does realize Ted Cruz is Hispanic?

Shocking nobody, the youths are suspected to have been executed.

Via Coptic Solidarity:

According to Arabic media, the Islamic State has “arrested, if not executed, some youth [five] in the city of Raqqa [in Syria] for befriending and greeting Christians on the occasion of Christmas.”

ISIS reportedly told the five youth that “they are being detained after an investigation [including through their personal computers] found that they greeted the Christians and wished them a Happy New Year.”

When one of the youth tried to exonerate himself, an ISIS member replied: “Shut up! You accompany the Christians—is that not so?”

The five youth were then hauled to an unknown location. No information has since surfaced concerning their fate.

Heh…

Next global economic shoe to drop.

Via The Telegraph:

Chinese authorities have escalated their market intervention in a bid to prop up stocks after $590bn was wiped off shares on Monday.

Beijing’s state-owned financial institutions hoovered up shares, and regulators extended a selling ban on major companies, to quell investor fears after a tumultuous start to 2016 trading.
The main Shanghai Composite index of shares fell just 0.3pc on Tuesday, while the smaller Shenzen Composite declined less than 2pc, after bleeding 8.2pc at the start of new year trading.

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Lets elect his wife though. I’m sure she’ll fix this nearly three-decade old mistake.

Not sure who to feel worse for.

Via The Mirror:

A self-proclaimed wizard has been jailed for a year for racially abusing and threatening his Muslim neighbour.

George Vernon, 67, flew into a rage when Farman Farah played music and invited a friend to his flat to celebrate the Ramadan festival, Bristol crown court heard.

Drunken Vernon – who once called himself Mystic Merlin – turned his own speakers against an adjoining wall and grabbed a hammer and knife. He then confronted Mr Farah and made “unpleasant racially aggressive” threats to kill him.

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Aww, the poor Chicoms. They still have a population that’s dying away even after they got rid of their authoritarian “one child” policy:

Today, China faces significant demographic challenges in spite of their change in policy. Modern China needs to stoke population growth if it wants to avoid having too few workers in relation to retirees in coming years. For anyone that knows about demographics, having too many retired folk without enough workers to support them is a recipe for disaster.

Some say the one child policy was needed when it was enacted at the end of the 1970’s. According to some estimates, it’s prevented over 400 million births. But this artificial demographic planning has come a large cost, as it’s widely recognized that the one child policy has had many unintended consequences.

For instance, there’s a massive gender imbalance because people have selectively terminated pregnancies in favor of having boys. That’s because families in China prefer sons, who can support them when they get old. That means that many Chinese men have a hard time finding a wife. Hopefully, the resulting “youth-bulge” that will occur following the reversal of the one child policy will be more gender-balanced or the fallout can be significant. Countries with a male-heavy demographic are more likely to endure civil unrest, war, and instability.

Population growth is key to sustaining Chinese power. There’s little doubt that China’s impressive manufacturing sector has significantly contributed to global economic growth in recent years and that inexpensive, mass produced Chinese wares have revolutionized our way of life (It’s likely you’re reading this article on a China-made electronic device). Cheap labor has always been the centerpiece of the manufacturing model in China. Therefore, without sustained population growth, China’s ability to manufacture competitively will be in grave danger. In other countries, immigration usually picks up the slack when population growth falls, but China is not a popular destination for global migrants in the slightest.

Via NY Times:

Donald J. Trump continued to fan the flames of doubt over Senator Ted Cruz’s citizenship on Wednesday, suggesting that his Canadian roots might be a problem if he won the Republican presidential nomination.

The decision to confront Mr. Cruz more directly comes as Mr. Trump, who has dominated most national and state polls for months, faces the prospect of losing to the Texas senator in next month’s Iowa caucuses. Popular among evangelical Christians and conservatives, Mr. Cruz has become a favorite to win the first contest of the nominating process.

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ISIS already control the Libyan Mediterranean port city of Sirte, which they would then use to distribute their oil globally. Pretty sophisticated for a JV team, ‘eh?

Tripoli (AFP) – Fighting raged between the Islamic State group and Libyan forces Tuesday as the jihadists pushed on the country’s crucial coastal oil terminals.

For the second day running, IS jihadists — an increasingly powerful force in strife-torn Libya — attacked oil facilities in the so-called “oil crescent” along Libya’s northern coast.

IS has for several weeks been trying to push east from its coastal stronghold of Sirte and officials have warned of crippling consequences if the jihadists manage to seize control of Libya’s oil resources.

“Fighting continued today between Daesh and oil facility guards backed by the air force,” said Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the unit tasked with guarding oil installations, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

“The fighting is happening in an area 20 kilometres (12 miles) southwest of Al-Sidra and we have lost seven men,” he said.

The key Al-Sidra and Ras Lanouf oil terminals were both targeted in IS attacks on Monday, prompting the National Oil Company to call on Libya’s internationally recognised government to “fully assume its responsibilities” and support guards with weapons, ammunition and equipment.

“If Daesh took control of oil terminals and fields around Al-Sidra, it would greatly paralyse the foundations of the Libyan state,” it said, adding that many guards had not been paid for several months.

IS fighters on Monday launched attacks, including a suicide car bombing, near Al-Sidra and Ras Lanouf, an army official said.

Worked for San Francisco.

Via Fox News:

Philadelphia’s new mayor, Jim Kenney, signed an executive order only hours after being sworn in that rescinds the city’s participation in a controversial program set up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Kenney’s order comes only a day after a series of ICE raids across the country that have been condemned by immigration activists.

“On his first day in office, newly elected Mayor Kenney reaffirmed that the City of Philadelphia is in fact the City of Brotherly Love,” Erika Almiron, director of the Philadelphia-based non-profit Juntos, said in a press release. “As ICE raids sew new levels of fear in our communities, Mayor Kenney is making sure local officials have nothing to do with it.”

Kenney’s move does away with Philadelphia’s participation in ICE’s Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which was established by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in 2014 as a replacement for the Secure Communities program. The program uses biometric data to prioritize the deportation of detained immigrants who have been “convicted of an offense listed under the DHS civil immigration enforcement priorities, has intentionally participated in an organized criminal gang to further the illegal activity of the gang or poses a danger to national security,” per ICE’s website.

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ISIS ripping a page from the Communist playbook.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region– Several teachers and civil servants were reportedly executed in Mosul for refusing to implement the Islamic State (ISIS) curriculum in schools, a local official told Rudaw on Monday.

“For refusing to follow the ISIS curriculum in schools which contains extremism ideology and encourages violence, the group executed several teachers and civil servants in Nineveh ,” Ghazwan Dawdi, a member of Nineveh provincial council told Rudaw.

Early in October and the start of the new school year extremists in Mosul changed the curriculum to focus more on teaching jihad and ISIS history.

A source inside Mosul said that the ‘terrorists’ were imposing a new system in elementary, high school and universities on levels of education.

The group is also printing new textbooks, the source added.

Catholic extremists planning retaliatory attacks. (Assploding sarcasm alert)

Via Washington Times:

The Vatican’s semi-official daily newspaper condemned French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo for its portrayal of God as an assassin in a special edition marking the one-year anniversary of a terror attack on the publication.

A million copies of the issue are set to hit France’s newsstands on Wednesday with a cover featuring a bearded man representing God with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, the Agence France-Presse reported.

“One year on: The murderer is still out there,” the cover reads.

In a commentary, the Vatican paper Osservatore Romano said: “Behind the deceptive flag of uncompromising secularism, the weekly is forgetting once more what religious leaders of every faith unceasingly repeat to reject violence in the name of religion — using God to justify hatred is a genuine blasphemy, as Pope Francis has said several times.”

“In Charlie Hebdo’s choice, there is the sad paradox of a world which is more and more sensitive about being politically correct, almost to the point of ridicule, yet does not wish to acknowledge or to respect believers’ faith in God, regardless of the religion,” it added.

The special edition will mark a year since two Islamic terrorists burst into Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters in eastern Paris and mowed down 12 people, including eight of the magazine’s employees, in retaliation for its satirical depictions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

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Um, doesn’t this show they don’t care about ‘international obligations’? Stay tuned for the sternly worded letter to the UN!

Yes, she really said that (not like anyone is surprised by it).

Via Newsbusters:

The View’s Joy Behar on Tuesday insisted that, regardless of whether Bill Clinton raped a woman or Ted Kennedy drowned someone, she would vote for these liberal politicians. Behar and her fellow co-hosts were discussing how Clinton’s past would impact his wife. She justified, “Republicans have voted against the Violence Against Women Act. Now, that to me, is more important than anything that Bill Clinton did or didn’t do because it’s what [Hillary’s] going to vote for.”  T

his came after co-host Paula Faris reminded, “Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey. They say that he [Clinton] either exposed himself to them, raped them or groped them.” Behar conceded, “He is a dog. Let’s face it.” She later declared, “But I still will vote for Bill Clinton because he votes in my favor.”