Saturday, February 13, 2016

Trump dominates #GOPdebate conversation on Twitter







Urgent action required by the Senate

Everything you need to know about tonight's GOP debate



The next Republican presidential debate is Saturday in Greenville, South Carolina... The debate begins at 9 PM EST and will last 90 minutes... will be broadcast on CBS and streamed online at ◼ CBSNews.com...

John Dickerson, anchor of CBS News’ “Face the Nation” and political columnist columnist for Slate, will be the primary moderator. CBS News White House correspondent Major Garrett and the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel will contribute questions. Dickerson moderated the CBS News Iowa debate and has been interviewing the Republican candidates regularly on his weekly show. Strassel wrote a column in the WSJ in November critical of Cruz’s foreign policy qualifications....

CBS has yet to release the field, but the six remaining candidates are all expected to make it in: Cruz, Rubio, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, and John Katich....

Breaking: Senior Associate Justice Antonin Scalia found dead at West Texas ranch
























































DRUDGE:

























'Massive Setback For Conservative Movement'...















REUTERS ROLLING: TRUMP 39.8%, CRUZ 18.6%, RUBIO 11.4%



“People are deeply concerned about inequality..that the system is rigged against ordinary folks." -Obama to donors who paid $33,400 a ticket

Rupert Murdoch says GOP will stack debate crowd against anti-establishment candidates







Food Stamp Beneficiaries Exceed 45 Million for 55 Straight Months

Congress Passes Law Permanently Banning Internet Taxes



“Students use it to research school projects and papers,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. “Entrepreneurs use it to help run their businesses and come up with new ideas. Families use it to manage their busy schedules and stay in touch with relatives. It’s important that they be able to do all of this without the worry of their Internet access being taxed.”

...“Internet Tax Freedom is one of those provisions that we’ve been extending every year in fits and starts,” he said in his weekly press briefing. “Americans should not have to worry about something as vital as this being taxed by any government at any level. So now, we are banning taxes on your internet access for good.”

Democrats More Likely To Dismayed If Their Children Marry Republicans

Jim Gilmore Withdraws From 2016 Race

Friday, February 12, 2016

Emails: Despite Knowing Of Lead In Water, EPA Planned To Let Flint Keep Drinking It Into 2016



Former Obama intel official: @HillaryClinton should drop out



New Emails Show Press Literally Taking Orders From Hillary Clinton



The Atlantic has updated the nearly seven-year-old article to reflect Gawker’s revelations.

“On February 9, 2016, Gawker called the reporting of this post into question. It is The Atlantic’s policy never to cede to sources editorial control of the content of our stories,” the magazine said.

Ambinder wasn’t the only person who may have followed demands from Reines. Mike Allen of Politico also used the “muscular” label for Clinton’s speech, and he also made a note of the arrangement of figures like Holbrooke and Ross. Allen taking orders from Reines wouldn’t be a huge shock, as it was recently revealed that Allen allowed Reines to ghostwrite an item in his popular daily Playbook email.

...Ambinder’s willingness to essentially produce Clinton press copy is particularly notable given an article he wrote in 2015 claiming the press would have a combative relationship with a Clinton presidential campaign.
“They’ll give her no quarter, and they’ll provide a good source of accountability tension until Walker (or whomever) emerges from the maelstrom,” he predicted....

"It's a new mundo": Trump leads among Latino GOP voters





Happy birthday President Lincoln!





Thursday, February 11, 2016

VIDEO: #DemDebate moderator caught muttering "Oh, God" when Sanders brings up Vietnam







Chamber of Commerce warns: Socialism is a failed system of the past

The EPA’s Lawless Land Grab

Hillary Clinton's week just went from bad to worse







Losing New Hampshire by 22 points to an avowed socialist was bad enough for Hillary Clinton. But then came the news — first reported by WaPo — that the State Department had opened a inquiry regarding the activities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation during her time time as secretary of state. And bad went to way, way worse.

...at some point Clinton will need to directly face down the fact that it's not just Republicans who are talking about her emails or her paid speeches or the Clinton Foundation. The numbers coming out of the New Hampshire exit poll make plain that Democratic voters care about honesty in their politicians, and those that prize it the most are voting heavily against Clinton.





U.S. and Russia agree to implement cease-fire in Syria



Air Force One lands in Los Angeles. Pres Obama tapes appearance on @TheEllenShow and does another 2 Dem fundraisers



State Department Does Not Know The Location Of Iran’s Uranium



Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Carly Fiorina Suspends Presidential Campaign











As many as 30 email accounts interacted with "top secret" data on Clinton server



Part of her problem is generational, with Albright, at age 78, and Steinem, 81, stuck in a time warp while many young women say they are free to support Sanders for the same reason men do: They find him more authentic, and her less honest.



Over years, New Hampshire earned its reputation for upending conventional wisdom, but the 2016 campaign is also leaving another legacy. When Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem tried to shame and bully young women into supporting Hillary Clinton, they inadvertently revealed a dirty secret of the left’s fixation on gender, race and ethnicity.

They demonstrated that hiding behind the gauzy appeals to make history is a willingness to use brass knuckles to achieve conformity. In their warped vision, biology trumps individuality, and those who don’t agree are traitors to their gender....

The bullying smears are backfiring, but before the incidents give way to new outrages borne of Clinton Entitlement Syndrome, some context is useful.

For one thing, neither Albright nor Steinem was thinking of Carly Fiorina or any female candidate other than Clinton when they insisted on conformity. So their demands amount to a selective use of gender as a partisan club, which ghettoizes female voters.

For another, Hillary’s enforcers are not alone in dipping into the gutter, with smears also leveled at Republican candidates who don’t fit a racial mold.

Some liberals have called Dr. Ben Carson, a distinguished surgeon running for president, an “Uncle Tom” for being a conservative, as if all black Americans must think and vote the same way.

Cuban-American senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are routinely accused of running from their Latin roots because they are Republicans who oppose illegal immigration. Again, the suffocating implication is that being an authentic Latino means being a liberal Democrat supporting open borders.

The pattern is not new, yet it is new that it no longer works. The 2016 race is turning politics upside down, and Albright and Steinem are among the establishment gatekeepers whose power is ebbing. Acting like bitter reactionaries, they resort to intimidation.

Trump is for real, Sanders is going national — and other takeaways from the #NHPrimary







New Ted Cruz video

He just came in second place in the Republican #NHPrimary — but who is John Kasich?







Marco Rubio: 'I dropped the ball'







Chris Christie suspending campaign



Why Ted Cruz is now the Republican frontrunner





Jason Johnson, Cruz's chief strategist, told the Washington Examiner that he considered Cruz's third place finish a victory for the campaign. Johnson said the Granite State provided Florida Sen. Marco Rubio the opportunity to defeat Donald Trump and the senator failed to do so.

"You look at how much time each candidate has spent in the state and how much each candidate has, time spent and money spent, no one performed better than Cruz tonight." Johnson said. "I can tell you internally from looking at the numbers, second wasn't in the cards. Our goal was simple and that was to be in the top tier in a state that has been traditionally very friendly to the establishment."

The next #GOPDebate is this Saturday, February 13th.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

New Hampshire Primary results:



























Free Stuff or Die











“Since 1952, New Hampshire has selected the Republican nominee 14 out of 17 times.”

































Yeah, “no sense of panic,” but they’re losing to the 74-year-old Sanders, an extremist kook from the fringe. The Clintons are discovering that a Cult of Personality doesn’t work if voters don’t like the personality at its center.



This Is How Hillary Clinton Gets the Coverage She Wants



...On the morning of July 15, 2009, (The Atlantic’s Marc) Ambinder sent (Philippe Reines, Clinton’s notoriously combative spokesman and consigliere) a blank email with the subject line, “Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?” His question concerned a speech Clinton planned to give later that day at the Washington, D.C. office of the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank. Three minutes after Ambinder’s initial email, Reines replied with three words: “on two conditions.” After Ambinder responded with “ok,” Reines sent him a list of those conditions:
From: [Philippe Reines]
Sent: Wednesday, July 15 2009 10:06 AM
To: Ambinder, Marc
Subject: Re: Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?

3 [conditions] actually

1) You in your own voice describe them as “muscular”

2) You note that a look at the CFR seating plan shows that all the envoys — from Holbrooke to Mitchell to Ross — will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something

3) You don’t say you were blackmailed!
One minute later, Ambinder responded:
From: Ambinder, Marc
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:07 AM
To: Philippe Reines
Subject: RE: Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?

got it
Ambinder made good on his word. The opening paragraph of the article he wrote later that day, under the headline “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Smart Power’ Breaks Through,” precisely followed Reines’ instructions:
When you think of President Obama’s foreign policy, think of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That’s the message behind a muscular speech that Clinton is set to deliver today to the Council on Foreign Relations. The staging gives a clue to its purpose: seated in front of Clinton, subordinate to Clinton, in the first row, will be three potentially rival power centers: envoys Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, and National Security Council senior director Dennis Ross.

Hillary Clinton: Excerpted Emails Explode Emergency Excuse



...The new documents include an email from Clinton asking Abedin (who was also using a non-official email account) to print a couple of March 2011 emails from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which had in turn been forwarded from Sullivan’s non-official email account.

Clinton and her aides were well aware that Blair’s emails were “born classified” – in other words, foreign government information that protocols clearly indicate should have been treated as classified documents immediately, without any need for the explicit markings Clinton often claims are missing from the sensitive material on her mail server.

In addition to “born classified” material that was never marked, many of the sensitive documents on her server appear to have been cut-and-pasted from secure systems, rendering her talking point about classification markings absurd: the documents weren’t marked because her aides stripped the markings away.

In that vein, another email from the new release described by Judicial Watch has Clinton explicitly ordering her deputies to remove identifiers and then print that email from her longtime associate Sidney Blumenthal – who wasn’t supposed to be working for the Secretary of State at all. These documents contained advice on Libya, where Blumenthal just happened to have business interests....

Ben Carson To Skip NH Primary Party; Will Meet With Cruz On Thursday

“It was a revelation. It restored residents’ spirits and autonomy. Many started dressing themselves, leaving their rooms and eating again. The number of prescriptions fell to half. The death rate plummeted.”



“[Dr. Thomas] decided to transform the nursing home. Based on a hunch, he persuaded his staff to stock the facility with two dogs, four cats, several hens and rabbits, and 100 parakeets, along with hundreds of plants, a vegetable and flower garden, and a day-care site for staffers’ kids.

“All those animals in a nursing home broke state law, but for Thomas and his staff, it was a revelation. Caring for the plants and animals restored residents’ spirits and autonomy; many started dressing themselves, leaving their rooms and eating again. The number of prescriptions fell to half of that of a control nursing home, particularly for drugs that treat agitation. Medication costs plummeted, and so did the death rate.

“He named the approach the Eden Alternative — based on the idea that a nursing home should be less like a hospital and more like a garden — and it was replicated in hundreds of institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia as well as in all 50 U.S. states (the animal restriction in New York was voted down).”

Monday, February 8, 2016

Parcel taxes are not required to have any relationship between what is being charged and the property owner's ability to pay, and politicians can spend the money on whatever they want.



Even if one lives in a cave, it’s hard to avoid the publicity surrounding the high profile presidential debates that are a reminder that this is an election year. And California taxpayers know, from hard experience, it also means that it is open season on taxpayers as local politicians rush to put tax increases on the ballot.

Emboldened by success in little-publicized 2015 off-year elections in which 29 out of 40 local tax increase measures passed, scores of communities and special districts are seeing this year as an ideal opportunity to raise your taxes.

Presidential election years tend to bring out more voters, including many who do not pay close attention to what’s on the ballot until the last minute. These “low information voters” are a prime target of tax raisers because they are more easily convinced by simplistic arguments. These duplicitous arguments often tout the benefits of a measure to a community, without ever mentioning that it is a new tax. Or they minimalize the actual cost by expressing it in pennies per day, “It will only cost about 50 cents a day!”

Of course those promoting new or higher taxes do not want taxpayers to notice that they are often being attacked on several fronts simultaneously, as cities, counties and special districts reach for their wallets.

One of the most popular taxes from the standpoint of public officials is the parcel tax, usually a uniform property tax on all “parcels” of property within a community or district. The politicians like these taxes because, unlike bonds which must be used for brick and mortar projects, the revenue from parcel taxes can be used for any purpose including raises in pay and pensions for public employees.

These taxes are insidious because they exceed Proposition 13 limits and there is no relationship between what is being charged and the property owner’s ability to pay. A young couple in a starter home, an elderly couple in a bungalow and a multimillionaire in a mansion, all pay the same amount. Additionally, parcel taxes bear no direct connection to any service actually provided to the property owner.

Already there is a parcel tax slated for nine Bay Area counties, while cities and school districts throughout the state are preparing their own new taxes for the ballot.

So, if you are a property owner, especially one on a limited budget, it is important to familiarize yourself with what is on your local ballot. There is a good chance that you will find a parcel property tax. Fortunately, because of Proposition 13, these require a two-thirds vote, so if a tax is not justified, there is a realistic opportunity for voters to reject it.

To paraphrase a series of commercials promoting a satellite television service currently urging viewers “don’t be a settler” – “don’t be a low information voter.” When your sample ballot arrives in a few short months, study it carefully. Keep in mind that the official title and summary for tax measures are often manipulated by the political class to encourage a Yes vote. If you have any doubts about the information provided, do further research.

Brit Hume on Jeb Bush's low poll numbers: "I just think people wanted to turn the page, and he was on that page."

Your guide to the Republican primaries



The presidential nominating process is the most intricate and arcane part of our political system, perhaps because it’s the only bit not addressed in the Constitution.

The two major parties have held national conventions to choose presidential and vice presidential nominees for more than 150 years, Democrats starting in 1832 and Republicans in 1856.

But most delegates to those conventions have been chosen in primary elections only since 1972. This year’s Republican contest will be just the seventh open-seat contest since then with no incumbent president running, and so old rules of thumb may not apply. The Republican National Committee has also scheduled the first contests later, in February, and the national convention earlier, in July, and decided that delegates should be awarded proportionally to candidates’ votes in contests held before March 15....

FBI confirms investigation into @HillaryClinton's emails.



Kurt Schlichter - The Case for Donald Trump