Sunday, January 24, 2016

Fox News Poll: Trump gains in Iowa, still dominates in New Hampshire

Rosie O'donnell Cartoon

rosie o'donnell

Donald Trump Says Megyn Kelly Should Skip Debate; Fox Says She’ll Be There

Since Megyn Kelly’s pointed question to Donald J. Trump about his treatment of women in the first Republican debate, he has been attacking her regularly, through Tweets and on the campaign trail. Bailey comment: "He should attack her, she ambushed him in the first debate"!

His most recent attack: Ms. Kelly shouldn’t be allowed to moderate the next debate, to be held on Thursday, because of “conflict of interest and bias.”

Since August, the bad blood has been decidedly one-sided, as Mr. Trump has repeatedly called Ms. Kelly a liar and overrated, and retweeted supporters calling her a bimbo. Most memorably, he seemed to suggest she was menstruating during the debate when he said in an interview, “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

Ms. Kelly had asked Mr. Trump during the debate about his history of disparaging women he did not like by calling them “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” After he criticized her, she stood her ground, saying in August that she planned to “continue doing my job without fear or favor.” She has never engaged with the candidate on any of his attacks, and has had his supporters on her show, including most recently Sarah Palin.

Fox News showed no signs of giving in to Mr. Trump’s displeasure with the questioning, stating just a week following the first debate that all three moderators would again host the debate in January.

On Saturday, it reiterated that stance, saying in a statement: “Megyn Kelly has no conflict of interest. Donald Trump is just trying to build up the audience for Thursday’s debate, for which we thank him.”

Request to delay January release of Clinton emails blames snow, Republicans say ask political, tied to early primaries

The State Department is asking a federal court for a one-month extension for the January 29 release of emails from former agency secretary Hillary Clinton, citing in part problems from this weekend’s snow storm and sparking outrage from Republicans about the delay influencing early voting in the White House race.
“It’s clear that the State Department’s delay is all about ensuring any further damaging developments in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal are revealed only after the votes are counted in the early nominating states,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus after the request Friday.
Lawyers for the agency, which Clinton ran from 2011 to 2013, made the request in a federal court in Washington, which in May ordered the emails to be released monthly, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“The Clinton email team must perform its work on site. … This storm will disrupt the Clinton email team’s current plans to work a significant number of hours throughout the upcoming weekend and could affect the number of documents that can be produced on January 29, 2016,” agency lawyers wrote in their request.
Clinton, the Democratic front-runner for the 2016 nomination, exclusively used a private email account and a home server during her time at the agency. She said this was a decision made out of convenience and has denied doing anything wrong.
An extension, if granted, would push the complete publication of Clinton's emails past several of the earliest primary contests, including the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire. If they come out instead on Feb. 29, it would be a day before the critical Super Tuesday primaries.
“The American people should be outraged at the Obama administration’s gamesmanship to protect someone who recklessly exposed classified information on more than 1,300 occasions, including highly sensitive Top Secret intelligence,” Priebus continued.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday the agency cannot meet its court-mandated goal of Jan. 29 because about 9,400 of the 55,000 remaining pages "contain a large amount of material that required interagency review."
“The remaining emails are also the most complex to process," he said.
However, the agency will make public as many as possible next week, Toner also said.
The Clinton campaign referred questions by Fox News back to the State Department, include a request to respond to the RNC saying the extension request was politically connected to the 2016 voting schedule.
Some of the most contentious emails haven't yet been published. They include two that an intelligence community auditor says are "top secret" and others he claims are even more sensitive, containing information from so-called special access programs. Such programs suggest the emails could reveal details about intelligence sources.
The State Department says no emails published so far contained material with "top secret" information or any material that was marked classified at the time. The issue has nagged at Clinton's presidential campaign, with the FBI said to be examining in some capacity.
Toner said the delay in publication isn't the result of "ongoing discussion about classification" that has been made public recently. He said he couldn't comment further on ongoing litigation.

Clinton, Rubio score key Iowa paper's endorsement ahead of caucuses

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Marco Rubio each won a key endorsement Saturday from the Des Moines Register newspaper,(
The Register first endorsed candidates in the 1988 caucuses. "Before that time, the thinking on the editorial board was that the Register, as an independent newspaper, should refrain from getting mixed up in the internal affairs of the Democratic and Republican parties as they chose their nominees," wrote Richard Doak, former Register opinion editor. "The thinking changed in the run-up to the 1988 caucuses."
That year was much like this year, drawing several candidates to Iowa to vie for the nominations of both parties.)
eight days before the state holds its first-in-the nation voting caucus for president.
"If there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on this year, it’s the fact that the next president will face enormous challenges," the paper's editorial board said in endorsing the Democratic front-runner and Florida GOP senator.
The paper, considered Iowa's most prominent daily, said the next president must work with Congress in confronting a host of issues including immigration, health care, gun control and the growing national security threat.
And he or she must "on the world stage" work with foreign leaders in stopping the Islamic State and other terrorists, North Korea and Iran's nuclear threat and the Russian incursions in Ukraine.
The paper said Clinton was "not a perfect candidate" but that no other can "match the depth or breadth of her knowledge and experience."
Board members said Republicans have the opportunity to define their party’s future in this election by choosing “anger, pessimism and fear.” Or it could be the party in which Rubio “the son of an immigrant bartender and maid could become president,” they said.
“Rubio has the potential to chart a new direction for the party, and perhaps the nation, with his message of restoring the American dream. We endorse him because he represents his party’s best hope,” the board said in an apparent rejection of the political rhetoric of front-running Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who are in a close race to win the Iowa GOP caucus.
The Clinton endorsement comes ahead of the Feb. 1 caucus in which Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders trails Clinton 42-to-48, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average.
The board argued Sanders was "an honorable and formidable campaigner" but said even Sanders' acknowledges that essentially all of his reform plans have no chance of being approved by a GOP-heavy Congress.

The editorial board acknowledged concerns about how Clinton handled “the furor over her private email server" and argued that she has yet to realize that "when she makes a mistake, she should just say so."
The Democratic and Republican candidates met twice with the board in question-and-answer sessions.
“It’s been a long time since the Republican Party has had an agenda that talks to students,” the board said after Rubio’s meetings.
While calling Rubio “whip smart,” the board also suggested that he and some of his plans, including one to replace ObamaCare, remain a work in progress.
Trump and others, the board suggested, have responded to the public’s anger and frustration with Washington by trying to demonize government and “resorting to the cheap demagoguery.”

Trump weighs lawsuit over Cruz citizenship

Businessman Donald Trump hinted Saturday he might decide to sue rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over the legality of his U.S. citizenship.
“Ted has a lot of problems – number one Canada. He could run for the Prime Minister of Canada and I wouldn’t even complain because he was born in Canada, it’s a serious thing,” Trump told a few thousand supporters at a rally in Sioux Center, Iowa.
He said Democrats would look to sue Cruz if he became the Republican nominee. “There are already two lawsuits filed, but they don’t have standing, I have standing to sue (as a candidate), can you imagine if I did it? Should I do it just for fun?”
Though Trump went on to explain he’s confident on winning the GOP nomination, thus “I don’t really think its going to matter, that’s probably why I want to save the legal fees … maybe I would do it, maybe I won’t either”.
Cruz pushed back earlier this month during the Fox Business debate on claims made against him. “You know, back in September, my friend Donald said that he had had his lawyers look at this from every which way, and there was no issue there. There was nothing to this birther issue.”
He added, “the facts and the law here are really quite clear. Under longstanding U.S. law, the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.”
Cruz did become a Canadian citizen at birth due to that’s country legal system, which the senator didn’t realize until 2013. He formally renounced his Canadian citizenship in May 2014.
While there is debate over what defines American citizenship, the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the criteria for presidential office holders.
In 2008, then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain faced questions over his own citizenship since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, a U.S. territory at the time. Attempts to further the debate over his status didn’t pan out.
McCain did tell Phoenix radio station 550 KFYI in early January that his situation was different. The Arizona senator said that he “didn’t know” about Cruz’s eligibility to run for president and added, “it’s worth looking into”.

Biden says US, Turkey prepared for military solution against ISIS in Syria

Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday the U.S. and Turkey are prepared for a military solution against ISIS in Syria should the Syrian government and rebel-opposition forces fail to reach a peace agreement during its upcoming meeting in Geneva.
The next round of Syrian peace talks are scheduled to take place Monday, but are at risk of being postponed over a dispute over who will comprise the opposition delegation, according to Reuters. Syrian rebels said they hold the Syrian government and Russia responsible should the peace talks fail to bring an end to the civil war that has torn the country completely apart.
"We do know it would better if we can reach a political solution but we are prepared ..., if that's not possible, to have a military solution to this operation in taking out Daesh," Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
A U.S. official later told Reuters that Biden’s comment was talking about a military solution to defeating Islamic State, not Syria as a whole. Biden said he and Dabutoglu have also discussed how both the U.S. and Turkey can support Sunni Arab forces fighting to force out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
He also met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, capping a two-day visit to Istanbul focused on boosting the fight against ISIS militants and trying to resolve the Syrian crisis.
U.S. has backed Syrian rebels with Special Forces soldiers to help train them. Washington is also conducting air strikes against ISIS, which holds large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Secretary of State John Kerry also said Saturday he was confident Syria peace talks would proceed. Kerry met with Riad Hijab, chair of the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee and other delegates representing the Syrian opposition.
"They discussed the upcoming U.N.-sponsored negotiations regarding a political transition in Syria and all agreed on the urgent need to end the violence afflicting the Syrian people," State Department spokesman John Kirby said.
Kerry emphasized how important it is to maintain the momentum of the International Syria Support Group, a group of big world and regional powers backing peace efforts in the war-torn nation, Kirby said.
Biden also offered his condolences over a Jan. 12 terror attack that killed 12 German tourists in Istanbul. The Turkish authorities say the suicide bomber was linked to the Islamic State.
"We have a robust operation and commitment to defeat ISIL," said Biden, crediting Turkey for increasing efforts to secure its 550-mile border with Syria, as well as allowing anti-IS coalition aircraft to use Turkish bases for bombing runs against IS targets.
Biden also acknowledged the threat that Kurdish militants pose to Turkey, calling the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, "a terrorist group plain and simple." Ankara views its war on terror as a two-prong effort focused on Kurdish militants and IS jihadists who have established cells in Turkey and use the country as a gateway to Syria.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Jane Fonda Organizing 'Dump Trump' Campaign / Hanoi Jane

Prominent actors, writers and thinkers joined a "Stop Hate Dump Trump" campaign to denounce the billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner, saying he is a threat to the United States.
Actors Harry Belafonte, Kerry Washington and Jane Fonda, filmmaker Jonathan Demme and intellectual Noam Chomsky are among those lending their support to the drive to prevent Donald Trump getting into the White House.
"We are offering Americans a chance to be heard and engage in action, as Trump's campaign gains momentum even as he increases his hateful and divisive rhetoric," said playwright Eve Ensler, one of three cofounders.
"We also intend to put the media and political institutions on notice that they are accountable for normalizing Trump's extremism by treating it as entertainment, by giving it inordinate and unequal air time and by refusing to investigate, interrogate or condemn it appropriately."
Trump announced his bid for the White House last June, dominating the news cycle of the presidential race ever since with insults slamming Mexicans and illegal immigrants, and a call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
The website said it united people as diverse as worker movement leaders, actors, teachers, farmers, students, poets and heads of companies.
"We believe Trump is a grave threat to democracy, freedom, human rights, equality and the welfare of our country and all our people," the campaign said.
"History has shown us what happens when people refuse to stand against hate-filled leaders. We pledge ourselves to speak out in every way possible against the politics of hate and exclusion he represents."
Nearly 1,200 people had added their signatures to the campaign within hours of it going live on Wednesday.
Jodie Evans, a documentary film producer and cofounder of the anti-war organization Code Pink, said the initiative had arisen out of a conversation with Ensler and said the celebrity endorsements had come from their friends.
"The media is pushing the hate of Donald Trump like it's a reality show," she told AFP.
The third cofounder is law professor Kimberle Crenshaw. For the real story on Jane Fonda check out the story below:

Traitor: "Hanoi Jane" Fonda

She was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda, but earned her reputation as "Hanoi Jane" Fonda after "aiding and abetting" the enemy -- North Vietnam -- as documented in these photos taken in Hanoi (July 1972):

Hanoi Jane on North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun: A few hundred yards from the location of this photograph, American POWs were being subjected to all manner of torture at the "Hanoi Hilton." You can read about one of those POWs, Col. Roger Ingvalson, whose aircraft was shot down by an NVA-AAG similar to the gun Hanoi Jane is straddling.

Hanoi Jane laughing it up

Showing her admiration

Fonda called returning POWs "hypocrites and liars," adding, "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed. ... Pilots were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic. I believe that's a lie." You can read about one of Fondas "hypocrites and liars" in this Veterans Day Profile: Point Man, Roger Helle

Visiting with Friends

Looking for Target

With Tom Hayden back from Hanoi

Read the transcript of Hanoi Jane's propaganda radio broadcast delivered in Hanoi, North Vietnam on August 22, 1972.
As for the success of anti-democracy protests by radical protagonists like Fonda, John Kerry and others, Hanoi could not have been more pleased.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, supreme leader of the North Vietnamese Army, told CBS in a 1989 interview: "We paid a high price [during the Tet offensive] but so did you [Americans] ... not only in lives and materiel. Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory.... The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion. "
More to the point, in a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a communist contemporary of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who was serving as an NVA colonel assigned to the general staff at the time Saigon fell, had this to say about the Leftmedia and Soviet puppets like "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and John Kerry: "[They were] essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
Bui stated further, "Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."
Most notably, Bui observed, that the 1968 Tet Offensive was "to weaken American resolve during a presidential-election year. We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect."
Sixteen years later, under enormous pressure after Ronald Reagan had restored the honorable social standing of military service, Fonda admitted to former American POWs and their families that she regretted the pain she caused them. Few accepted her apology.

Fonda Power

In a 2005 interview with CBS, Fonda reiterated that she had no regrets about her trip to North Vietnam in 1972. "There are hundreds of American delegations that had met with the POWs. Both sides were using the POWs for propaganda... It's not something that I will apologize for."

Peace

More Peace

Fonda with last in husband line, Ted Turner, Village drunk and self-appointed ambassador to North Korea, who observed recently, "Obviously, I don’t like to see nuclear proliferation, and I’m very upset about [the North Korean test]," as opposed to his earlier position being "absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere" about not developing nuclear weapons.