RUTHFULLY YOURS

As I was saying at the dawn of this day:

1) Trump;
2) Kasich;
3) Rubio;
4) Bush;
5) Cruz.

Number One and Two were correct, and at this hour Numbers Three, Four and Five are all jostling together at 11 per cent, but with Cruz third and Rubio fifth. On the Democrat side I noted the midnight vote tallies from Dixville Notch, Hart’s Location and Millsfield:

Sanders 17
Clinton 9

And I suggested that that spread might “hold throughout the day”. It pretty much did: Bernie 60 per cent, Hillary 38 per cent. And in the northern and western counties of New Hampshire, Mrs Clinton got seriously Berned. Coos County: Sanders 63 per cent, Clinton 35. Grafton: Sanders 65, Clinton 34. Sullivan: Sanders 68, Clinton 30. Carroll: 63, Clinton 36. It took older, moneyed women in the prosperous south-east corner to push Hillary up to 39 per cent. That’s really her only constituency: liberal women over 65 making 200 grand a year.

On the Republican side, Trump won yuge: 35 per cent in a nine-man race, and more than twice as many votes as the second-placed Kasich. On the latter, I wrote three weeks ago:

On the “moderate” side of the GOP, the thinking since debate season began is that Rubio is the alternative to Bush, and Christie is the alternative to Rubio. But it could be that Kasich is the alternative to all three of them.

And so it proved. Good for Kasich. But a nightmare for the GOP’s Donor-Industrial Complex: Trump has the populist lane, Cruz the conservative, and both are reviled by the so-called “establishment”. All New Hampshire had to do was sort out the so-called “moderate” lane by anointing Rubio, and, in a three-way race, he’d eliminate the Trump-Cruz problem. That was the theory.

El Rushbo is showing why he is the top talk show host in America once again. During Monday’s radio show Rush Limbaugh didn’t make fun of Marco Rubio for saying that President Barack Obama is doing what he does on purpose.

During Saturday’s debate in New Hampshire, Rubio repeated a variation of the same line several times: “Anyone who believes that Barack Obama isn’t doing what he is doing on purpose doesn’t understand what we are dealing with here,” Rubio said.

The repetition was mocked during the debate by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and since then by others, but on Monday, Limbaugh was asking why others were not parroting Rubio’s line.

“This is really, really important,” Limbaugh said. “There are only two people that I’m aware of that are making a consistent point of this. Rubio, actually, is atop of this. Rubio and Cruz are the only two in the entire Republican field. Carly Fiorina may have said something like this occasionally. With Rubio, it’s a theme. With Cruz, it’s close to a theme. And the real question is: Why do the other Republicans in the field disagree?”

If you are a woman, you don’t get to pick which presidential candidate to support based on his or her stances on the issues like men do — you have to support Hillary because she’s a woman like you are.

Think that sounds sexist? Well, it is. In fact, it’s some of the most idiotic pieces anti-woman garbage I’ve ever heard — which is why it’s so sad that it’s coming from Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, both of whom are widely considered to be feminist icons.

On HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Steinem said that women “get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’”

First of all, there are approximately 9 million reasons to support Bernie over Hillary if you’re a liberal woman. Bernie has a long, consistent record of supporting the things that liberal voters consider important — like fighting for LGBT rights and against Wall Street — while Hillary has a record of supporting whatever the hell happens to be politically convenient at the time.

Now, Steinem eventually sort of apologized by saying that she “misspoke” and actually wasn’t trying to say that “young women aren’t serious in their politics.”

First of all, that’s crap. Saying that young women decide who to vote for based on how to get boys absolutely is saying that they “aren’t serious in their politics.” It can’t be interpreted any other way.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has warned young women that if they do not vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they are traitors to their sex. At a Saturday New Hampshire rally for Clinton, Albright repeated her tagline, with a beaming Hillary looking on:”There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

Albright is not alone in attempting to motivate young women to support Clinton. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem also backed Clinton, and recently insinuated that young women only support rival Bernie Sanders because “the boys are with Bernie.” Steinem has since attempted to dial back the accusation, explaining on Facebook that her words were “misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.”

The Iowa caucus entrance-poll results show women favored Clinton over Sanders, 53 percent to 42 percent. But young voters under the age of 30 overwhelmingly picked Sanders, 84 percent to 14 percent. A recent Marist poll found 76 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire under the age of 30 supporting Sanders, including a 29-point lead among women under age 45.

Clinton has convinced high-profile millennial women such as Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, and Kim Kardashian to stump for her, in an effort to court young women. When Albright delivered her line, Clinton burst into joyous laughter. There is, however, no word yet on what circle of hell is reserved for women who don’t vote for Carly Fiorina.

Just the thing to propel her into the New Hampshire primary tomorrow:

In a letter disclosed Monday in a federal court filing, the FBI confirms one of the world’s worst-kept secrets: It is looking into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Why say this at all, since it was widely known to be true? Because in August in response to a judge’s direction, the State Department asked the FBI for information about what it was up to. Sorry, the FBI said at the time, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.

Now, in a letter dated February 2 and filed in court Monday, the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, notes that in public statements and congressional testimony, the FBI “has acknowledged generally that it is working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server.”

Baker says the FBI has not, however, “publicly acknowledged the specific focus, scope or potential targets of any such proceedings.” He ends the one-paragraph letter by saying that the FBI cannot say more “without adversely affecting on-going law enforcement efforts.”

The letter was filed in one of the Freedom of Information Act cases brought against the State Department over access to documents from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. This one was filed by Judicial Watch.

Russ Ramsland is a Tea Party leader and a Harvard MBA who has built businesses and created jobs in countless fields including oil & gas, communications and real estate right here in Texas. He is a native of West Texas and a long-time resident of Dallas who currently lives in Texas’s 32nd congressional district. This is the same district that Congressman Pete Sessions, the chairman of the House Rules Committee and a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee currently represents. Russ is running against Rep. Pete Sessions because as he states “our so-called representatives, some of whom have been in Washington almost 20 years, are no longer representing our values and priorities. Washington is no longer listening to us,” Ramsland states.

As a principled constitutional conservative, Ramsland is in the same place as Katrina Pierson was two years ago, challenging incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions in the Republican primary. Sessions won a seat in Congress in 1996. He now chairs the powerful House Rules Committee, which shapes legislation and decides how bills are debated and amended on the floor. Pete Sessions is considered by some pundits to be a loyal establishment-type Republican, a Republican in Name Only (RINO) to be precise.

Ramsland says, “The voters of the 32nd district want to secure the border and enforce our immigration laws, replace Obamacare with free market healthcare reforms and return control of education to Texas and to parents. I am running because I believe that they should have an opportunity to be represented by someone who wants the same things.”

The question on everyone’s mind is: can Rep. Sessions be defeated? Can Mr. Ramsland dethrone the heavyweight, deep-pocketed Republican Pete Sessions with deep pockets? Russ says yes. It has been done before here in Texas when Ted Cruz defeated the wealthy and powerful establishment-backed David Dewhurst in the 2012 GOP primary and went on to win the nomination in a runoff.

Whether you believe that there were nefarious motives behind the advancement of inaccurate information about the Carson campaign by Cruz ground operatives in Iowa or not, one thing is certain, true and undeniable. The leading candidates for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States are feeding on each other. By doing so, they have effectively created an “emotional division” between the voters of the Right. To prove this out all one has to do is spend some time on social media threads related to the topic. Phrases like “Cruz haters,” “Carson’s a whiner” and “Trump is an idiot” are myriad. So, too, is the Conservative rank-and-file’s sudden acceptance of CNN as a credible, non-biased news source.

This election cycle the best that the Democrats can offer is a throwback hippie Socialist and the most disingenuous and opportunistic politician in recent history. The prospects of one of these improbably political creatures reaching the White House relies exclusively on the Republicans finding a way to shoot themselves in the foot; damaging each other so extensively in the primaries that the bleeding continues into the General Election. On the heels of eight years of Progressive rule and their disastrous policies for our economy and national security; in light of myriad scandals and a possible indictment hounding the DNC frontrunner, Republicans should have been able to nominate a potato chip and won in November.

Enter the politics of division. Enter opportunistic political tactics ala the Chicago machine. Enter the type of politics that each and every one of the Republican candidates says they abhor; that each says they will excommunicate from the lexicon of American politics should they be elected to the presidency.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, N.H. on Sunday. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Many women who showed up at a presidential campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., at Great Bay Community College on Sunday said they were insulted and “offended” by supporters of Hillary Clinton who have suggested it is somehow anti-feminist to back Sanders instead of Clinton’s quest to become the first female president.

Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife, had a succinct response when Yahoo News asked her opinion of those who suggest it’s sexist to support Sanders instead of Clinton.

“I think it’s ridiculous. He’s the…” she began before trailing off. “It’s crazy.”

Cokie Giles, a registered nurse from Bangor, Maine, who traveled to neighboring New Hampshire for the rally, said she does not appreciate being “herded along just because I’m a woman.”

“Well, I don’t want to think that I have to vote for a woman, being a woman, because there’s a woman running. They have to be who I would look at as … my best choice,” Giles said. “I’m not trashing Hillary. I’m just saying Bernie is the better of the choices. And I will get a chance to vote for a female president. I would like to see a female president, and there’s plenty out there that I would be very happy to do.”

Two high profile feminist Clinton supporters, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, have made headlines with recent comments about female Sanders supporters.

Gov. Christie’s Strange Relationship with Radical Islam

http://www.investigativeproject.org/2506/gov-christie-strange-relationship-with-radical#

Four Islamists on Gov. Christie’s Muslim Outreach Committee Despite each of their links to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, Christie trusted Islamists to be part of his advisory committee.

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/four-islamists-gov-christies-muslim-outreach-committee#

Once Embraced by Chris Christie, New Jersey’s Muslims Feel Betrayed

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/nyregion/new-jersey-muslims-feel-sense-of-betrayal-by-christie.html?_r=0

The invitation arrived by email, bearing the seal of the State of New Jersey and the name of its new governor, Chris Christie. It asked a select group of Muslim leaders to break the daily Ramadan fast at Mr. Christie’s home, and began with a traditional Muslim salutation.“Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you),” the greeting, from summer 2010, read. “Wishing you a happy and blessed Ramadan.”

With the gathering, at an evening meal known as Iftar, Mr. Christie opened what Muslim leaders recall as a period of exceptional warmth between the state’s sizable Muslim community and a prominent Republican. The governor became a fierce defender of local Muslims, rebuking his party in forceful terms for its hostility to a proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and denouncing what he called “the crazies” on the right for attacking a Muslim lawyer Mr. Christie had selected for a judgeship.

But as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination half a decade later, Mr. Christie’s ties to Muslim leaders in New Jersey have grown deeply strained. The governor has recast himself as a relentless warrior against terrorism, with little patience for what he calls “politically correct” national security policy. Among some community leaders, who saw Mr. Christie as a rare Republican who rejected alarmist, broad-brush rhetoric about Islam, a sense of betrayal has set in.

Sometimes you outsmart yourself. After re-watching the excruciating Rubio-Christie exchange (embedded in David’s post), I can’t help but think that Marco Rubio outsmarted himself – or at least locked in on the wrong part of Chris Christie’s commentary and, in the heat of the moment, couldn’t let go.

In the post-mortem, it has been noted repeatedly that Christie attacked Rubio as an unaccomplished, programmed candidate. But Rubio’s alleged insufficiencies were only one part of Christie’s argument. The other, the actual premise of Christie’s critique, was the analogy of Rubio to Obama.

Christie contends that the Obama who ran for president in 2008 was an unaccomplished, hyper-programmed, first-term senator who was utterly unprepared to be president. That, according to Christie, has caused seven years of amateur-hour governance. To elect Rubio, he thus concludes, would be to invite another disastrous presidency led by an untested young man who would be in way over his head.

This analogy to Obama, rather than Rubio’s own alleged failings, was the part of Christie’s case that Rubio seized on. To some extent, this is understandable: Rubio is on surer footing talking about Obama than about his own record of accomplishment, the best known aspect of which is pushing through the senate, in collusion with Obama, a bipartisan immigration bill that is anathema to the GOP base (but, by the way, would have been fine with GOP “moderates” like Christie).

Yet Rubio also had an important point: Christie’s premise is dead wrong. Obama has not steered the Titanic into an iceberg because he is an unprepared, untested amateur. He has done it quite deliberately, at times masterfully, because Obama believes in the policies that constitute the iceberg. He is a movement leftist with a transformational agenda and an Alinskyite’s understanding of the extortionate uses of power. Authoritarian rule, government-controlled health care, open borders, runaway spending, Islamist sympathies, crony-capitalist green energy – these are not initiatives Obama stumbled into because he was unprepared. Obama has studiously taken the country where he wants it to go. And he has rolled over the old experienced hands to do it – so much for amateur hour.