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Cruz Tops Trump; Rubio Nearly Overtakes The Donald By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

With record-high turnout in the Iowa caucus, the top three Republicans were separated from each other by just a few points.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) came in first with 28 percent, followed by Donald Trump at 24 percent. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) surged past his polling expectations to take 23 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

“So this is the moment they told us this would never happen,” Rubio told supporters in Des Moines. “…They told me I had no chance because my hair wasn’t gray enough and my boots were too high.”

“I’m just really honored,” Trump said at his Iowa headquarters, congratulating the others in the race. “We’re leaving tonight and tomorrow afternoon we’ll be in New Hampshire… I think we’re going to be proclaiming victory, I hope.”

Cruz was the last GOP candidate to take the stage as his victory really, accompanied by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and his father, Rafael Cruz.

“Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next president of the United States will not be chosen by the media,” Cruz said.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was locked in a tight race with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 49.8-49.6 percent with 95 percent reporting.

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Voter Fraud: We See Dead People By Lloyd Marcus

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

It’s true, folks. Patriot sister Sharron “Braveheart” Angle has taken on battling voter fraud, sounding the alarm that it is running rampant in America. What good is winning the hearts and minds of voters if we allow Democrats to steal elections?

Sharron suffered the devastation of election corruption when she almost defeated Harry Reid in 2010. Illegals voted for Harry Reid. There is evidence that Reid possibly stole the election from Sharron Angle using dead voters, people in prison, and illegals.

Romans 8:28 says “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” I suspect Sharron’s painful loss has made her a passionate crusader, committed to cleaning up the electoral process.

Remember the Black Panther Party thugs who stood outside the polls armed with clubs? Though they were charged with voter intimidation, Obama’s DOJ arrogantly and without apology outrageously dropped the charges because the perpetrators were black. Can you believe that, folks? Meanwhile, Obama looks down his morally superior nose at us, proclaiming himself a defender of equal justice.

South Carolina’s attorney general found evidence that at least 900 dead people voted in an election. Philadelphia flagged 50,000 duplicate registrations. Voting machines are changing peoples’ votes. A voter was caught registering six times. Meanwhile, Democrats act outraged and seek to shackle and flog Republicans in the public square for suggesting that all Americans must show a photo ID to vote, claiming it is an evil racist Republican plot to disenfranchise black voters. Fearlessly, along with fighting voter fraud, Sharron has a Voter ID initiative. www.sharronangle.com

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European Pathology Hasn’t Changed By James Lewis

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

After the Hitler and Stalin disasters, Europeans swore “Never Again!” over and over again. Never Again to the Holocaust and Stalin massacres, but also to the many occasions of mass bloodshed that began with the wars of the Reformation.

And yet, today we can see Europe’s boastful old narcissism again.

It is a troubling and ominous sight.

I don’t mean to pick on Europe — there are plenty of mad political movements in the world. But Europe has been the source of all major international wars for centuries. Maybe it was only the Industrial Revolution that made Europe so destructive. But its neurotic repetition compulsion goes back at least to the invention of the printing press, which made mass political movements possible.

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,” said the Greeks, and they were right. The very same signs of severe mental pathology seem to show up before every major bloodletting in history. If you look for historical patterns, you can see the signs long before mass violence breaks out again. Today, the most stunning example of pathology is visible in the suicidal policies of the European Union, a grossly dysfunctional family if ever there was one.

Many historians consider World War I to be the greatest disaster of the 20th century, because it killed a whole generation of highly educated men, who could have given constructive political and cultural leadership for decades to come. World War I itself was triggered by a century of tit-for-tat Franco-German wars, and it led directly to Hitler and the Cold War.

The war brought Lenin to power in Russia, followed by the first Marxist Terror. Hitler’s rise was driven by a desire to take revenge for WW I. Without WW I the world would have been spared much suffering.

Every European disaster echoes the previous one, which is why the historical pattern looks so neurotic. Europe’s propaganda line changes, but it always comes down to the same old narcissistic grandiosity, the same glorious rhetoric of Empire. Today the European Union is seriously intent on taking over the world via bureaucratic imperialism, using a network of international “laws” that nobody has ever voted for. Euro-imperialism is the reason behind the global climate fraud.

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Hamas: The “Merchants of War” Who Seek to Destroy Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

In the words of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the tunnels are being dug not only to “defend the Gaza Strip, but to serve as a launching pad to reach all of Palestine.” As one can see from any map of Palestine, “all of Palestine” does not mean living in peace alongside Israel; it means supplanting Israel.

To its credit, Hamas has been refreshingly transparent about its ambition, the elimination of Israel. Hamas wants the Palestinians to continue living in misery and bitterness. It is fertile soil for jihad recruitment.

A Palestinian Authority-Hamas unity government would mean tunnels not only along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, but also from the West Bank into Israel.

Forever looming, of course, is the illusion that Abbas will be able to persuade Hamas to abandon its aim to destroy Israel.

The myth that Hamas uses tunnels to smuggle food and other necessities to the “besieged” Gaza Strip has been buried under the rubble of the tunnel that collapsed last week east of Gaza City.

The incident, in which seven members of Hamas’s armed wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, were killed when the tunnel they were working in collapsed, provides further proof that the Islamist movement has stayed true to its charter, which calls for the total destruction of Israel.

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Washington’s Next Hacking Target? An agency holding 139 million Social Security numbers fails cyber test.

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

If you think the Department of Education is making a mess of the student-loan program, you should see how it manages technology. Recurring failures documented by internal and external auditors have House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz warning that the agency could be Washington’s next cyber-disaster.

The education department doesn’t hold nuclear launch codes. But its vast data trove on student-loan borrowers and their parents—and the nearly $100 billion it disburses in new loans every year—are reason enough to want the bureaucrats to prevent digital intrusions. Mr. Chaffetz says the bureaucracy now holds, among other things, 139 million Social Security numbers in its digital files.

The stakes go well beyond personal privacy. Federal student loans outstanding exceed $1 trillion, and Team Obama is trying to forgive those debts. It would add injury to injury if cyber-fraudsters were able to pile on for a taxpayer plundering. A Tuesday oversight hearing will explore the department’s failure to protect its information from cyber-attack, as well as the conduct of its chief information officer.

Department of Education Inspector General Kathleen Tighe reported in November that her team has been “finding the same deficiencies over and over again” regarding information security. Since 2009 independent auditors “have found persistent IT control deficiencies in key financial systems,” she said.

The 2015 internal audit of information security revealed more problems, including an “inability to detect unauthorized devices connecting to the network.” The IG also flagged “key weaknesses” in “internal intrusion detection and prevention of system penetrations.” Specifically, her team was “able to gain full access to the Department’s network and our access went undetected” by both the contractor overseeing the system and the department’s information office.

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Trumped in Iowa Cruz and Rubio are the big GOP winners, while Hillary shows weakness.

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

The American political revolution appears to be exaggerated. Iowa Republicans played to their social conservative form Monday by vaulting Ted Cruz to victory over Donald Trump in their first-in-the-nation caucuses, while as we went to press Democrats were narrowly turning back Bernie Sanders’s populist challenge in favor of Hillary Clinton’s interest-group machine.

The night’s biggest loser, to borrow a word, was Mr. Trump, who in the end couldn’t turn his large crowds and polling leads into enough caucus voters. There’s no doubt the New York businessman helped to generate higher turnout, which broke recent caucus records for Republicans. But perhaps he should have attended that debate last week after all, or maybe there are limits to his unconventional media-dominated, celebrity politics.

Mr. Trump still leads in the New Hampshire polls, but one question is how he will respond to the uncomfortable reality of second place. His speech on Monday night was, to borrow another phrase, low-energy.

Instead Mr. Cruz prevailed like Mike Huckabee (2008) and Rick Santorum (2012) by mobilizing the state’s cultural conservatives into a 28% plurality. The first-term Texas Senator had the support of Iowa’s conservative pastors network, he spent months organizing across the state, and his campaign invested heavily in voter analytics. The Texan also passed the first test of his theory that he can win the GOP nomination, and then the Presidency, with a hard-edged conservative message.

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Front-Runners Give Ground as Rivals Make Mark in Iowa Donald Trump fell short, Hillary Clinton flirted with disaster, and their main rivals had strong nights By Gerald F. Seib

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

Ted Cruz did what he had to do. Donald Trump fell well short of the shock-and-awe moment he hoped would set up a blitz through the rest of the country. Marco Rubio bought himself a seat at the big table. And Hillary Clinton flirted all night with disaster.

Those were the big story lines that emerged from Iowa’s caucuses Monday night. It’s early—ridiculously early, actually—to draw too many conclusions. But the results suggested that a fight still lies ahead on the Democratic side, and a potentially much bigger and longer battle is ahead on the Republican one.

Perhaps most important, the Iowa results suggest that those fights will take place in two parties deeply divided between insiders and outsiders, between young and old, and between the most and least wealthy. The situation is volatile, and, as a consequence, unpredictable.

By late last night, it was clear that Mr. Cruz rode his strong support among evangelical conservatives to a victory. He had to do that to be a viable long-term candidate; if he couldn’t charge ahead in a state where evangelical voters traditionally have an outsize influence, his candidacy would have been seriously compromised.

Mr. Trump calculated that he could make a late surge in Iowa, put away Mr. Cruz and pave the way for a big win in New Hampshire to start putting away the competition. That didn’t happen. His brand has been that he is a winner; it remains to be seen what the Iowa outcome does to that brand.

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Ted Cruz Beats Donald Trump in Iowa’s GOP Race By Patrick O’Connor and Janet Hook

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

DES MOINES, Iowa—Texas Sen. Ted Cruz outmuscled Donald Trump to win the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses on Monday, delivering a stinging rebuke to the celebrity businessman and establishing himself as a leading contender for the GOP nomination.

The results Monday set the stage for a series of high-stakes showdowns in the weeks ahead between the top two finishers and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whose appeal as a general-election candidate was good enough for a late surge that nearly overtook Mr. Trump.

“Tonight is a victory for the grass roots,” said Mr. Cruz to a raucous victory party in Des Moines. “Tonight is a victory for millions of Americans who have shouldered the burden of seven years of Washington deals run amok.”

Mr. Trump kept his post-caucus remarks brief, thanking his family and the state of Iowa before turning his attention to contests that follow. “We love New Hampshire, we love South Carolina,” he said.

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Defining Presidential Down If this election is so crucial, why have the front-runners been so awful? By Bret Stephens

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

In 2014 I wrote a book that made the case that the United States, for all of its problems, was not in decline. Now and again I have my doubts.

The results of Monday’s Iowa caucus won’t be known until after this column goes to print. But here’s what we know already about the four top contenders. No prizes for matching names to descriptions:

1) A compulsive liar with a persecution complex, a mania for secrecy, and a bald disdain for rules as they apply to lesser people.

2) A bigoted braggart with a laughable grasp of public policy and leering manners of the kind you would expect from a barroom drunk.

3) A glib moralizer who is personally detested by every single senator in his own party, never mind the other one.

4) A Sixties radical preaching warmed-over socialism to people too young to know what it was or too stupid to understand what it does.
Such are the character traits of the candidates now vying to possess the nation’s nuclear launch codes. This being a free country, they are entitled to their ambitions. This also being a democracy, we are responsible for our political choices. So how is it that we have come to choose this?

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ISIS beheads boy; parents watch : Martin Barillas

Posted By on February 2nd, 2016

Islamic State terrorists beheaded a 14-year-old boy in front of his parents, according to ARA News. The murder took place on January 30 in Jarablus – a city in northern Syria. The report said that the boy had missed Friday prayers at the mosque.

At the worship space in central Jarablus, extremist preachers who call for an Islamic Caliphate regularly call down death sentences for alleged sinners.

Human rights campaigner Nasser Taljbini reported that the Islamic sharia court had ordered the execution of sentence to take place in public. “Dozens of people attended the brutal execution, including the victim’s parents who were forced to witness the beheading of their own son,” Taljbini said.

ISIS forces boys and adolescents to fight alongside adult terrorists and sometimes forces them to participate in beheadings of captives.

Earlier this week ISIS reportedly arrested dozens of women in Jarablus for violating the Sharia dress code. According to their interpretation of Islam, women must be fully covered from head to foot. Infractions are dealt with harshly.