UN raises billions for Syria relief, and critics ask if it is helping Assad

While the U.N. tries to raise billions for Syrian relief, it is under growing fire for helping the Assad dictatorship carry out a brutal “surrender or starve” strategy against its opponents, who are also beset by the scourge of ISIS.
Frustrated aid workers, academics and beleaguered Syrians are pointing  to the U.N.’s long-standing, cooperative ties with the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad in dispensing humanitarian aid inside the country as empowering the dictator to funnel relief supplies to his supporters, keep food and supplies away from desperate civilians who do not support him and use the relief to free up money for military campaigns against moderate and extreme opponents alike.
As one group of besieged anti-Assad Syrian aid workers put it in an open letter to the head of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Stephen O’Brien:  “For many of us in Syria, the U.N. has turned from a symbol of hope into a symbol of complicity.”
The rising frustration comes as a major donor meeting is getting under way  in London, aimed at  getting  wealthy nations to contribute $9 billion this year for relief efforts in Syria and surrounding countries, where millions of refugees have fled. The U.S. has given some $4.5 billion to the effort since the Syrian crisis began in 2011, and Secretary of State John Kerry announced an additional $925 million contribution at the London meeting.
For its part, the U.N. pushes back vehemently against any idea that its relief efforts help Assad. “Civilians bear the brunt of the inhumane actions by all parties to the conflict, the government and armed groups, which the international community has failed to stop for nearly five years,” declared an OCHA spokesperson in response to a question from Fox News.
“We and our partners continue to call for an end to the brutal violence, for those committing war crimes to be held accountable, and for the international community to take action. The voice of the United Nations humanitarian agencies has been loud, clear and unequivocal on this.”
Meanwhile, Assad’s forces, supported by Russian attack bombers, are instead drawing the noose of desperation even tighter.
This week, they continued to blast away at relief corridors that provide intermittent aid to hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrians in the northern city of Aleppo, and sparked a sudden “pause” in U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva that had nominally flickered into existence at the end of January.
The Syria Institute, a Washington-based think tank,  contends that no fewer than 46 Syrian communities with a collective estimated population of about 1.1 million  are now under siege in Syria, with all but two sieges involving the Assad regime, though some communities also are besieged by ISIS.
CLICK HERE FOR THE TALLY
The Syria Institute population figures, produced in collaboration with a Dutch organization called PAX, do not include some 40,000 people estimated to be clinging weakly to life in the town of Madaya, where only one U.N. relief convoy has recently been allowed to enter, and where, according to a January 16  story in Foreign Policy magazine, U.N. officials had known about the town’s desperate plight for months but downplayed it.
Meantime, as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power noted last month, “Out of a total of 113”  relief convoy requests the U.N. sent to the Syrian regime, “this U.N. member state approved and completed only 13.” In 80 cases, she added, Syria “did not even bother to respond to the United Nations within three months.”
Power called that “part of a deliberate, systematic strategy aimed at killing and displacing civilians.”
The continuing offensive and the diplomatic pause put a shadow over a British-backed preliminary to the donor conference where Syrian and international non-government organizations issued a strong appeal to wealthy donor nations to “demand an immediate end to siege tactics and demand unhindered access to humanitarian aid.”
Along with additional pleas to the donors to “strongly and unconditionally condemn all attacks on civilian life and infrastructure, the non-government attendees also called on rich countries to “provide long-term funding directly to Syrian civil society organizations,” a pointed departure from the U.N.-coordinated global funding process that has dominated the relief effort so far.

“Civilians bear the brunt of the inhumane actions by all parties to the conflict, the government and armed groups, which the international community has failed to stop for nearly five years.”
- OCHA spokesperson

“It sounds like the major donor partners increasingly understand the need for changes in the way things are done,”  said Simon O’Connell, executive director for Europe of the major U.S. humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, which is deeply involved in getting aid to Syria without the involvement of the Assad regime.  “There is recognition that at least some of the assistance is not able to make it to some of those most in need.”
O’Connell diplomatically pointed no fingers of blame in discussing the non-governmental appeal with Fox News, which he saw as a coming sea-change in the way that international aid is organized and delivered around the world.
But other humanitarian workers have had no such qualms.
In a toughly-worded article that appeared Monday on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored magazine, Foreign Affairs, Dr. Annie Sparrow, a veteran international medical aid worker and assistant professor at Mount Sinai Global Health Center, declared that “long-festering concerns over OCHA’s lack of neutrality are growing.”
OCHA is the U.N. department that draws together global and international appeals for response at events like the donor mega-conference underway in London, and then  helps redistribute the money to the sprawling U.N. array of agencies, funds and programs, as well as other aid groups. It also coordinates relief efforts on a regional and national basis, including in Damascus, where it meets in a committee with members of Syrian government departments, and all non-U.N. aid agencies working in tandem must be approved by the Assad regime.
“Characteristic of many agencies of the United Nations, OCHA places a premium on maintaining good relations with the Syrian government, a position fueled by its desire to stay in Damascus,” Sparrow declared. She added that “it is worth asking whether OCHA’s bottom line is harming the agency’s efforts to alleviate the catastrophic consequences of Damascus’ anti-civilian strategy.”
Among other things, Sparrow charged that some $1.7 billion of the U.N.’s appeal for Syria “is allocated for U.N. and national agencies operating from Damascus, all controlled by the government and providing aid almost exclusively to government territory. In non-government territory, the U.N. in Damascus must work through the Syrian Arab Red Crescent” –whose local branches are often non-partisan and perform countless heroics, but whose leadership has close ties to the Assad regime.
Despite a 2014 U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing cross-border relief convoys into the northern half of Syria, she declared, citing a 2016 U.N. Humanitarian Needs Overview, “U.N. agencies reached an average of 4 per cent of the civilians in besieged areas (about 16,500 people) each month with health assistance, 0.6 percent (roughly 2,500 people) with food, and less than 0.1 percent (fewer than 500 people) with nonfood items such as tents, blankets and soap.”
(The same U.N. overview notes vaguely that “OCHA is “aware of” more than 185 Syrian NGOs working in humanitarian and development aid, including 75 that “continue to deliver substantive quantities of assistance to Syria from neighboring countries”—but also says they work “alongside” U.N. cross-border operations—in other words, there is no U.N. connection.)
More dramatically, Sparrow charges that OCHA’s 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria, which asks international donors for $3.2 billion to provide aid to some 13.5 million people, is a “watered down document” in which the Syrian government “revised the narrative, the budget and the programming,”  including any reference to the removal of land mines, a constant hazard to foraging civilians.
“According to the final Humanitarian Response Plan,” Sparrow declared, “there is no war in Syria, only a crisis and insecurity, which, incidentally, is not the government’s fault.” She also offered up samples from a draft version with tracking changes that removed touchy references.
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Asked by Fox News to respond to the article, an OCHA spokesperson emailed that “the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and its staff are impartial, neutral and independent. Suggesting otherwise is not only untrue but also irresponsible, and could be detrimental to the safety of the unarmed aid workers risking their lives every day to bring vital aid and protection to people in dire need.”
“The United Nations provides humanitarian aid on the basis only of an objective assessment of need -- in this and all crises,” she added. “Our focus is and will always be on the quickest, fairest and most efficient way of safely bringing people aid and protection, and telling the world what is happening on the ground.”
Many Syrians, however, disagree. In their open letter last month to the head of OCHA, Stephen O’Brien, members of anti-Assad non-government Syrian aid organizations -- “medical workers, teachers, rescue workers and civil society activists”-- declared that they were among those living under siege, and described their nightmare of “being starved, deprived of medical supplies and in almost all cases bombed daily by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.”
What made the grim suffering more painful, they said “is knowing that in many besieged areas, such as those around Damascus, U.N. warehouses full of lifesaving aid are often just minutes away.” They accused O’Brien of “choosing not to deliver that aid to us . . . because the Assad regime is not giving you permission. This is hardly surprising since it is the regime imposing the sieges in the first place.”
“By allowing the regime to veto aid to civilians in areas outside its control, you have allowed the U.N. to become a political tool of the war,” they declared and urged him simply to defy the government.
In reply, O’Brien said he was “deeply saddened and concerned,” and called the siege conditions “unacceptable, unconscionable and unlawful.” Saying that he had personally accompanied cross border relief convoys, and stressing the personal risks U.N. aid workers had taken, he offered assurances that “the U.N. is neither too close to any party nor acting in such a way to encourage the use of siege tactics.”
Repeating the mantra that only a political solution will solve the problem, he reiterated that “it is our duty to act impartially, neutrally and independently.”
The fact, however, is that all U.N. agencies, and not just OCHA, are careful to show deference to “national partners” in the planning processes for their activities in acknowledgement of the primacy of national sovereignty -- and Syria is no different, except in the bloodthirsty and violent way that it treats much of its population.
In its own country plan for Syria, for example, the United Nations Development Program declares that its country office, “with full cooperation with national partners, will identify target areas and beneficiaries …using available assessments of needs and priorities”—which are unlikely to come from rebel enclaves.  UNDP also says that some 933,000 people in Syria are already benefiting directly from cash-for-work schemes.
The child aid agency UNICEF, in a Syrian country program that it considered at its most recent Executive Board meeting this week, declared that over the next two years, its programing will focus on “interventions that enhance the resilience of families, communities and systems,” and states that while “working closely with all national partners, UNICEF will build positive coping mechanisms in communities.”
Overall, the UNICEF document said, “The country program priorities and strategies have been aligned with the future priorities of the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic.” The agency is appealing for $389 million to carry out its Syrian work.
In response to questions from Fox News, a UNICEF spokesman said that its country program, “including its humanitarian response, is informed by discussions and consultations with a range of partners, including national partners. This is normal practice, for operational and technical reasons. UNICEF delivers assistance based on the core humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality.”
After conducting more than 100 interviews with aid workers, volunteers and Syrian “stakeholders” over two years, a freelance journalist and a Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge University have come to the opposite conclusion about U.N. aid efforts. Despite their “pretensions to neutrality,” the two concluded, in an article published in the prestigious British journal International Affairs, that U.N. aid deliveries have “consistently benefited the Assad regime.”
One reason, they argue, is that the Assad regime’s authoritarian socialist development model had always involved “various welfare policies aimed at ensuring food security and political compliance,” such as subsidized bread supplies.
In other words, by “channeling most assistance” through Assad-approved local partners, “external donors have helped the regime fulfill some of its welfare responsibilities.” The regime also “shares credit for welfare provision without diverting resources from its military efforts.”
In some cases, the authors cite witness testimony that food aid is simply expropriated by the Assad military.
On the other hand, the regime’s refusal to allow aid convoys to reach dissident communities is the traditional harsh side of the same policy.
As the two authors put it:  “While emergency aid can appear apolitical on the surface,” the “undeniable importance of food during wartime makes a position of neutrality untenable.”
“By bringing external resources into life-or-death situations,” they conclude, “aid agencies inevitably become implicated in war’s inner workings.”
The need to get aid to suffering populations regardless of the protocols of neutrality is one reason why Mercy Corps’ O’Connell feels there is a growing argument for putting more resources in the hands of non-governmental and local Syrian organizations, as the NGO conference he attended strongly endorsed.
Mercy Corps itself, he noted, is managing to get aid supplies --not always regularly -- to some 500,000 people per month in the Aleppo governate that is now under increasing Assad pressure. The current Assad offensive, he subsequently declared, is having a “significant impact” on Mercy Corps’ work, causing temporary suspension of aid operations in some villages; the aid organization is “monitoring the situation closely.”
Before the suspension, O’Connell  told Fox News, “We see areas where at times we have to vary our strategies for delivering aid. On certain days we are able to get through, and others, not.”
The current humanitarian system, he observes, “is broken.”

Clinton: '100 percent confident' nothing will come of FBI email probe

Hillary Clinton defiantly claimed at Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate that she is “100 percent confident” nothing will come of the FBI’s investigation of her email practices and has no concerns about the controversy’s impact on her chances in the race.
“I have absolutely no concerns about it whatsoever,” the former secretary of state said at the MSNBC-hosted debate in New Hampshire.
The comments come less than a week after the State Department confirmed that, as it releases thousands of Clinton emails, it is withholding 22 emails containing information too “top secret” to release.
But Clinton pointed Thursday to emerging reports that former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the immediate staff of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also received classified national security information on their personal email accounts. The details were included in a memo written by the State Department watchdog that was released Thursday.
IG Steve Linick said in the memo that two emails sent to Powell and 10 emails sent to Rice's staff contained classified national security information. Powell and Rice were the top diplomats under Republican President George W. Bush.
"None of the material was marked as classified, but the substance of the material and 'NODIS' (No Distribution) references in the body or subject lines of some of the documents suggested that the documents could be potentially sensitive," Linick wrote.
In a statement, Powell said the emails were from his executive assistant. He said that while the department now has said they are "confidential," which is a low level of classification, both messages were unclassified at the time and there was no reason not to forward them to his personal account. Powell's office said two FBI agents visited Powell in December for a general discussion about email practices during his time at State.
Clinton pointed to those developments in arguing that those officials are now facing the same scrutiny she’s facing, suggesting investigators are going too far in their handling of the “absurd situation of retroactive classification.”
She dismissed the controversy as similar to Republican criticism of her over the Benghazi terror attacks.
Earlier, however, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., challenged the campaign’s “everybody did it” defense.
“The attempt to paint her predecessors in the State Department as equal offenders in mishandling classified material is an insult to what we now know to be the truth,” Issa said in a statement. “Official investigations have confirmed that Secretary Clinton’s unsecure server stored more than 1,000 emails containing classified information, including some classified at the very highest levels. Her guarantee to the nation that the number was zero now seems more like desperation than news cycle spin.”
At Thursday’s debate, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders once again declined to criticize Clinton over the email scandal.
“I will not politicize it,” he said.

Sparks fly at Clinton, Sanders debate over who is more progressive

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed sharply Thursday over who is more progressive, at a debate that saw the former secretary of state ratcheting up her criticism of the Vermont senator on several fronts – even accusing him of engineering an “artful smear” with suggestions she could be “bought” by donors.
The debate, the first since the Iowa caucuses and last before next week’s critical New Hampshire primary, was by far the most confrontational of the Democratic primary race.
Clinton, coming off a narrow Iowa win and trying to shrink Sanders’ huge lead in Granite State polls, stayed on offense for most of the night. She slammed Sanders’ campaign promises as too costly, while standing firm in claiming she’s a true “progressive” despite Sanders’ comments to the contrary.
Sanders, meanwhile, dug in as he questioned whether Clinton really “walks the walk” of the progressive cause – and described her as the candidate of the “establishment.”
“Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans,” he said, stressing that he, unlike Clinton, doesn’t enjoy super PAC backing and is funded in large part by small-dollar donations.
The verbal jabs flew quickly, and Clinton left few allegations unchallenged, visibly fed up with a campaign trail narrative that has painted her as the candidate of Wall Street. She rebutted Sanders’ “establishment” charge by questioning whether someone running to be the first female president can carry that label.
The most heated moment at the MSNBC-hosted debate in Durham, N.H., came when Clinton told Sanders she rejects the suggestion that anyone who takes donations or speaking fees from interest groups can be bought.
“Enough is enough,” Clinton said, telling Sanders the “attacks by insinuation” are not “worthy” of him. Clinton said if Sanders has something to allege, “say it directly,” but: “You will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation that I ever received.”
She closed: “I think it’s time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent weeks.”
That line earned a groan from Sanders and some boos from the audience.
Sanders went on to link Wall Street deregulation with billions spent on lobbying and campaign contributions.
“Some people think, yeah, that had some influence,” he said.
Clinton, meanwhile, described herself as a “progressive who gets things done,” and ripped Sanders for suggesting Clinton cannot be a “moderate” and a “progressive” at the same time. She teased Sanders as being the “self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism” and said she doesn’t know anyone who fits his definition.
The fireworks underscored the tight state of the race going into New Hampshire’s contest next Tuesday. Clinton arrived on the debate stage clearly ready to rebut Sanders’ proposals and accusations – notably his oft-repeated criticism that she, as senator, erred by voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
“A vote in 2002 is not a plan to defeat ISIS,” she countered.
Yet as Clinton stressed her secretary of state experience and Sanders said that factor is “not arguable,” the Vermont senator noted experience is not the only point.
“Judgment is,” he said, again pointing to the 2002 Iraq vote. “One of us voted the right way, and one of us didn’t.”
As she has at prior debates, Clinton also challenged the senator’s proposals for free college and universal health care. “The numbers just don’t add up,” Clinton said.
She questioned how the country could, for instance, pay for free tuition at public colleges, as Sanders wants, and accused him of wanting to effectively scrap ObamaCare – a charge he denied.
Sanders defended his plans, particularly for universal health care.
“I do believe we should have health care for all,” he said.
The former secretary of state met the Vermont senator on stage in Durham, N.H., after eking out a narrow victory in Monday’s caucuses. While her campaign celebrated the win, Sanders’ strong showing in the state nevertheless has helped boost his fundraising – and he heads into New Hampshire with a steady double-digit lead in the polls.
There remains an ongoing dispute, however, over the Iowa results. The Des Moines Register editorial board earlier Thursday called for an audit of the Democratic caucus results, citing problems and confusion at polling sites.
Asked at Thursday’s debate about the editorial, Sanders said, “I agree with the Des Moines Register.”
He said after speaking with precinct captains, the campaign believes they may have “at least two more delegates.”
Yet Sanders, who has complained how some local delegates were allocated based on coin tosses, also said they should not “blow this out of proportion. “
“This is not the biggest deal in the world,” Sanders said.
Asked if she’d participate in an audit, Clinton said, “Whatever they decide to do, that’s fine.”
Clinton, separately, said she's "100 percent confident" nothing will come of the FBI probe into her personal email use as secretary of state.
The Democratic debate on Thursday was the first to feature Clinton and Sanders one-on-one, with former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley now out of the race following his distant third showing in Iowa.
The debate was one of four added to the calendar earlier this week, after the Democratic National Committee and the two campaigns agreed to the terms.  The party had come under criticism for its sparse schedule, and was accused of trying to shield Clinton from debates.

Cruz Cartoon

Pundits enjoy Trump's setback, but can he still make them losers?

Some in the media are openly celebrating Donald Trump’s loss in Iowa, others are doing it more subtly. 
But those who believe his candidacy has crashed and burned are making a mistake, succumbing to the heady Iowa elixir that makes caucus winners look unstoppable—usually for eight days or so.
Trump made his share of mistakes, chief among them blowing off the Fox News debate. I talked to a few Iowans during my week in Des Moines who felt aggravated by the move. But more important, he ceded the stage to Ted Cruz, who won Monday night, and Marco Rubio, whose late surge defied the polls and almost pushed him past Trump into second place. Trump’s “genius” move played well with the press, but in Ames and Cedar Rapids, not so much.
Still, Trump’s 4-point loss to the Texas senator suggests he probably would have lost the caucuses even if he hadn’t picked a fight with Fox and sidestepped the debate. Iowa was never a great fit for him, despite his inroads with the evangelical voters who dominate the GOP caucuses.
And yes, the ground game does matter. Trump never seemed all in on building the kind of sophisticated machinery that Cruz used to turn out the largest vote for a Republican in caucus history.
Still, a billionaire who had never run for anything managed to finish second in Iowa’s complicated caucuses, way ahead of several governors, not a bad first-time showing. (I wrote that sentence before Trump tweeted that the media were failing to give him his due.)
There was an unmistakable sense of vindication in the media reports that declared the man who talks so much about winning is now a loser. New York’s Daily News was the most unabashed, with its “DEAD CLOWN WALKING” headline.
For more than seven months, media skeptics warned that Trump was a sideshow, that he would implode, that doom was always just around the corner. Conservative commentators at Fox, National Review and elsewhere disparaged him as a fake right-winger.
In recent weeks, as polls had him pulling ahead of Cruz in Iowa, many pundits started hedging their bets, acknowledging that Trump could run the table and win the nomination. But the caucuses allowed them to slip back into told-you-so mode.
Of course, Cruz deserves credit for executing a flawless strategy, and especially for parrying Trump’s attacks as a nasty guy and Canadian interloper. Rubio deserves credit for threading the needle by appealing to the party’s establishment and tea party wings—and clobbering his mentor, Jeb Bush, who wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iowa.
Still, Cruz has to show that unlike the last two caucus winners, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, he can retrofit a made-for-Iowa vehicle to zoom to victory in bigger and more diverse states. And whatever bump Cruz gets from Iowa, Trump has big leads in New Hampshire and South Carolina, at least for now. And he doesn’t have to worry about donors.
So now we find out whether Trump can take a punch. A little dose of humility might be good for him. When I watched him say he was a little nervous in a Monday-morning interview, I remember thinking that the bombastic candidate was showing a side of himself that might appeal to voters turned off by the endless bragging.
In politics as in life, Americans like someone who can pick himself off the canvas. Ronald Reagan lost Iowa, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush lost New Hampshire, and all went on to win the White House. The press ought to be careful about once again writing Trump’s obituary.

Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

IRS computer problems shut down tax return e-file system

The IRS stopped accepting electronically filed tax returns Wednesday because of problems with some of its computer systems. The outage could affect refunds, but the agency said it doesn't anticipate "major disruptions."
A "hardware failure" forced the shutdown of several tax processing systems, including the e-file system, the IRS said in a statement. The IRS.gov website remains available, but "where's my refund" and other services are not working.
Some systems will be out of service at least until Thursday, the agency said. "The IRS is currently in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible," the IRS said.
Taxpayers can continue to send electronic returns to companies that serve as middlemen between taxpayers and the IRS. But those companies have to hold on to the tax returns until the IRS systems are up and running again, the IRS said.
While the IRS said it is still assessing the scope of the outage, it expects 90 percent of taxpayers will receive refunds within three weeks.
People who have already filed returns don't need to do anything more, the IRS said.

Clinton on $675G Goldman Sachs speech fee: 'That's what they offered'

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proved Wednesday to be unabashed about accepting millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street firms amid an increasingly competitive race with self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
At a CNN town hall in Derry, N.H., moderator Anderson Cooper asked the former secretary of state, "Did you have to be paid $675,000?", a reference to her fees for three speeches to Goldman Sachs. Clinton responded, "I don't know. That's what they offered."
Clinton went on to say that she accepted the Goldman money after she left the State Department in 2013, when, as she put it "I wasn't committed to running" for president. An Associated Press analysis of public disclosure forms and records released by her campaign found that Clinton made $9 million from appearances sponsored by banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity firms and real estate businesses.

Clinton made her comments amid an ongoing battle with Sanders over their respective progressive credentials following Clinton's narrow victory in Monday's Iowa Caucuses.
“I don’t know any progressive who has a super PAC and takes $15 million from Wall Street,” said Sanders, whose campaign has been driven by modest contributions and has risen in the polls on his promise of more equality for the middle class.
For her part, Clinton dismissed criticism that she’s not a true progressive and the long-held argument that she is part of the political establishment.
“I’m not going to let that bother me. I know where I stand,” said Clinton, who argued that the Sanders campaign tagging her as an establishment candidate because she was endorsed by Planned Parenthood was “inappropriate.”
“I am a progressive who gets things done,” Clinton added, before wondering aloud how Sanders came to be a progressive “gatekeeper.” She also disagreed with several aspects of Sanders’ platform, questioning his pledge for a "political revolution" and his plan to provide universal health care through expanding Medicare. Clinton said she wants to improve on ObamaCare, not dismantle it.

Despite their philosophical disagreements, both were in harmony on wanting to keep the Republicans out of the White House.
"These guys play for keeps,” Clinton said, while Sanders reserved most of his GOP-related ire for Donald Trump.
“Everybody in this room doesn’t want a right wing Republican in the White House,” he said. “I want Trump to win the nomination. And frankly, I think we could win against him.”
Though Sanders is running an insurgent campaign, he relied on his time on Capitol Hill to answer questions about whether Congress would approve some of his campaign promises and whether Democrats or Republicans better serve veterans.
“I have a history of working with Republicans when there was common ground,” Sanders said. He also pointed out that he was a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. However, Sanders acknowledged that he and other members of Congress “should have done better” recognizing and fixing problems with patient care at VA facilities.
Clinton and Sanders agreed on the need to stop the ISIS terror group with the help of coalition of nations, including Middle Eastern allies. Sanders continued to trumpet his opposition to the war in Iraq, which critics say eventually led to the rise of ISIS. Clinton, who voted to authorize the Iraq War, said Wednesday, “I did make a mistake.”
Clinton, also acknowledged she must do more to appeal to young people -- a voting bloc Sanders won handily in Iowa, saying “I accept the fact that I have work to … convey what I want to do for young people ... They don't have to be for me. I will be for them."
Clinton and Sanders won't clash face-to-face until Thursday's debate at the University of New Hampshire. On Wednesday, each answered about an hour’s worth of questions from voters and moderator Cooper.
Most polls have Sanders holding a substatial lead over Clinton in New Hampshire. The most recent Fox News poll, from late January, shows the Vermont senator with a 22-point cushion, 56 percent to 34 percent.

Top House Republican demands Kerry explain $1.7 billion Iran payment

Kerry admits some Iran deal funds will likely go to terror. (No Joke)

 The chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee demanded Wednesday that Secretary of State John Kerry explain a $1.7 billion settlement paid to Iran that some Republicans have described as a "ransom" tied to last month's release of five American prisoners.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., complained in a letter to Kerry that his committee was not consulted about the settlement. The Obama administration claimed the agreement was made to settle a dispute with Iran dating back to 1979 over $400 million in frozen funds. The remaining $1.3 billion was described by the Obama administration as "interest".
"It is unclear how this $1.7 billion payment is in the national security interests of the United States," Royce wrote.
Royce's letter included 10 questions to Kerry about the settlement. Among them are how the administration calculated the $1.3 billion "interest" on the payment, a timeline of negotiations over the payment since this past summer's nuclear deal, and why the money was not used to "compensate American victims of Iranian terrorism who have been awarded judgments against Iran."
Royce's letter also asks for a list of U.S. officials who participated in negotiations with Iran over the payment, the prisoner release and the nuclear agreement.
The White House announced the payment on Jan. 17, the same day that Iran released five American prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former Marine Amir Hekmati, and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini.
At the time, Obama defended the amount paid by the U.S., saying it was "much less than the amount Iran sought." The president added that the one-time payment was preferable to letting more interest accumulate while waiting for a judgement from the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, which is based in The Hague and was created in the deal that ended the Iran hostage crisis in 1981.
"I have a larger concern that in choosing to resolve this relatively minor bilateral dispute at this time, the Obama Administration is aggressively moving towards reestablishing diplomatic relations with Iran," Royce wrote. "Such action would clearly violate the President’s pledge to “remain vigilant” in countering the threat Iran poses to the United States and our allies in the region."
State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed to Reuters that Royce's letter had been received.
"As with all Congressional correspondence, we'll respond as appropriate," Kirby said. Royce's letter gives Kerry until Feb. 17 to respond to his questions.

Iowa Caucuses Cartoon

UConn building 'black-only' living space to promote scholarship

They're just kidding us right?

Faced with alarmingly low graduation rates for black males, the University of Connecticut is trying something it calls bold -- and critics call segregation.
The school's main campus in Storrs has launched a program slated for fall in which 40 black male undergraduates live together in on-campus housing. Proponents believe the students can draw on their common experiences and help each other make it to commencement. But others cringe at the idea of black-only housing, saying it turns decades of hard-fought racial progress on its head.
“Forget about this nonsense and just treat students without regard to skin color,” President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity Roger Clegg told Insidehighered.com. “If there are students of color who are at risk or who could use some access to special programs, that’s fine, but schools shouldn’t be using race as a proxy for who’s at risk and who’s going to have a hard time as a student. There are lots of African-American students who come from advantaged backgrounds. And lots of non-African-American students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

“Forget about this nonsense and just treat students without regard to skin color."
- Roger Clegg

ScHOLA²RS House – which stands for “Scholastic House of Leaders who are African American Researchers and Scholars” – was designed so UConn could more effectively marshal resources for black males, similar to other learning communities at the school that live as a group. When ScHOLA²RS House launches, it will be located in a new facility, Next Generation Connecticut Hall, along with seven other learning communities.
Niger Innis, the national spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality, said UConn may be unintentionally creating an atmosphere where black students are “the other.”
“If they wanted to go to an all-black institution, there are plenty of historically black colleges that still exist,” he told FoxNews.com. “But if they want to go to an institution that is racially diverse and integrated, then racial diversity and integration is part of it. To have a university-sanctioned segregation or separation is, to me, a bit troubling.”

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An artist's rendering of Next Generation Connecticut Hall. (uconn.edu)

Some minority students have expressed irritation at the narrow focus of ScHOLA²RS House.
While black females are “encouraged” to apply to other learning communities, according to the UConn website, that solution doesn’t appear to satisfy everyone.
“My immediate thought was ‘What?’” Haddiyyah Ali, an Africana studies and political science major, told Daily Campus. “I know there had to be a lot of research that went into it…but just for me coming from a student perspective, my initial thought was, 'What about black women and girls – what about us?'”
Vice Provost Sally Reis rejected critiques of the program.
“It’s no more segregated than putting individuals with an interest in entrepreneurship together because they have common interests,” Reis told FoxNews.com.
But while students with interests in engineering and public health and female students with a focus in math, science and engineering majors also have their own learning communities, a race-based cluster is new.
Erik Hines, a UConn professor set to serve as faculty advisor to the ScHOLA²RS House students, said that while the only current race-based group was for black males, the administration could add learning communities based on other races, genders or cultures.
“We have all types of learning communities,” he told FoxNews.com. “If they bring forth a proposal to our Office of Programs and Learning Communities they will be considered by our executive director.”
Hines said about 13 students had already applied for ScHOLA²RS House. Male students “who identify as African American/Black or mixed-race will be prioritized in selection, however any student interested in engaging in topics related to the experience of black males in higher education is invited to apply,” according to the UConn website.
 “In predominantly white institutions, some of the experiences that African-American males face on campus is a little different than some of the other populations,” Hynes said. “In some of your courses you can be the only African American male in your class. It could be stressful and that’s a huge burden to shoulder.”
Reis pins most of the pushback so far on “misinformation.”
“I’ve actually heard people saying, ‘You’re building a dorm for African-American males only?’” she said. “We’re not building a separate dorm. It’s not even a separate floor. It’s a portion of a new residence hall.”
Puppetry major Isaac Bloodworth told Daily Campus that opposition could be rooted in racism.
“The white portion of the University of Connecticut is probably not ready for it,” he said. “You have people who are going to go against it because they are just racist and they see this as a form of segregation or that we’re getting better things than they are.”

Carson accuses Cruz camp of spreading false rumors on campaign suspension

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson on Tuesday pointedly accused Ted Cruz’s campaign of spreading false rumors during the Iowa caucuses claiming the retired neurosurgeon was suspending his bid, in a coordinated effort to seal Cruz’s victory Monday night.
The stunning charge came as a Carson spokesman declared, “There has never been a more tainted victory in the Iowa caucuses.”
Early reports that Carson – who was directly competing with Cruz for social conservative and evangelical supporters – was leaving the campaign trail started to surface as caucusing began Monday evening.
Upon hearing reports that their candidate was leaving the trail to return to his home in Florida, Team Carson responded swiftly, saying the retired neurosurgeon was only going home for clean clothes but was then headed to New Hampshire for the Feb. 9 primary.
But Carson told Fox News Tuesday morning that Cruz supporters and representatives took that narrative a step further, and began telling caucus-goers at “many” precincts that he was dropping out.
Speaking on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Cruz apologized on Tuesday. He said their political team had forwarded an initial news report that said Carson was taking a break from the campaign trail, but did not forward an update to that same story.
“Unfortunately, they did not then forward the subsequent story, that was Ben’s campaign clarifying that he was continuing the campaign and was not canceling the campaign,” Cruz said. “And so I apologize to Ben for that. They should have forwarded that subsequent story. That was a mistake on our part.”
Carson's campaign issued a statement Tuesday evening saying he "accepted" Cruz's apology.
On Tuesday morning, Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler also told MSNBC that the campaign simply repeated what Carson had said: that after Iowa, he was returning to Florida for a couple of days, then going to Washington for the National Prayer Breakfast.
“That told us he was not going to New Hampshire,” Tyler said. “That was not a dirty trick.”
Carson, interviewed earlier on “Fox & Friends,” said that his supporters were told Monday that “voting for me was wasting their vote, and that they should reconsider.”
Carson ended up finishing a distant fourth in Iowa, with 9 percent, while Cruz claimed a big victory over Donald Trump. Cruz, a Texas senator, had 28 percent, and Trump had 24 percent. How much the drop-out rumors may have affected that count is unclear. But the interactive caucus process does offer an opportunity for supporters of one candidate to be persuaded to change sides before casting their ballot.
The usually mild-mannered Carson accused the other side of using the process to execute “dirty tricks.”
“It’s the exact thing the American people are tired of,” he said. “Why would we want to continue with this kind of shenanigans?”
He said his suspicions were also confirmed by tweets, “other correspondence,” and a first-hand experience by his wife at a precinct.
Carson said his wife Candy arrived at the precinct to learn that a Cruz supporter was “disseminating” the misinformation and was asked to set straight the record.
“She did, and we won that precinct,” he said.
One of the tweets, Carson noted, came from Rep. Steve King, a Cruz supporter and an influential Iowa Republican.
King later tweeted that he respects Carson and regrets any "miscommunications."
Carson said if Cruz was unaware of the tactics, then he should find out who was involved and fire them. And if Cruz knew about the effort, he should admit his involvement and “offer a solution,” Carson said.
The Cruz campaign is also taking heat for a “mailer” it sent out to potential voters before caucus night that seemingly accused them of voting violations.
Tyler earlier told MSNBC that Iowans are used to getting similar ones and that the campaign “modeled ours after them.”

Iowa scrambles expectations for 2016 'front-runners,' tees up drawn-out contest

The future of the 2016 presidential race ain’t what it used to be.
Emerging from Monday night's Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton -- the respective Republican and Democratic polling front-runners -- now appear locked in a dog fight heading into the New Hampshire primary.
Clinton's apparent razor-thin win in a photo-finish with Bernie Sanders does little to blunt the Vermont senator's momentum heading into the Granite State, where he enjoys a comfortable polling lead. The Associated Press and state Democratic Party called the Iowa race for Clinton on Tuesday.
On the Republican side in Iowa, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz beat billionaire businessman Trump -- but it's Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's closing surge to nearly overtake Trump that overnight changes the dynamic of the GOP battle.
“It’s a three-person race now,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told Fox News.
The New Hampshire primary next Tuesday, where no fewer than five candidates are battling for the No. 2 spot in the polls under Trump, could make the GOP leaderboard even more crowded.
On the Democratic side, Clinton was declared the winner of Monday’s Iowa contest, but only by a fraction of a percentage point.
Sanders, en route to New Hampshire overnight, suggested the results prove decisively he’s no longer a “fringe candidate,” as some had described him.
“We’re in this to the convention,” Sanders vowed.
To be sure, the 2016 outcome on the Democratic side had echoes of 2008, albeit with a better outcome for Clinton. In 2008, Clinton placed third while underdog Barack Obama won, using that momentum to eventually secure the nomination.
In this case, Clinton scored what appeared to be a narrow win – but in a contest where she used to be the overwhelming front-runner, at one point leading Sanders by roughly 30 points in the polls.
She now heads to New Hampshire where Sanders holds a wide lead in the polls. Like in 2008, she could very well go 1-1 with her closest rival in the first two contests.
Further, the race essentially begins at a near-draw in the delegate count. Sanders noted that Iowa's 44 Democratic national convention delegates would be distributed almost evenly between the two candidates. The Associated Press reported that Clinton had captured at least 22 delegates to Sanders' 21, with the remaining one going to the statewide winner.
Republicans gleefully described the returns as a problem for Clinton.
“It’s a total disaster for Hillary Clinton,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News, predicting the Democrats could be “even more unclear in April than we are” in their nominating contests.
Nevertheless, the Clinton campaign touted their narrow delegate lead early Tuesday as a victory, plain and simple – though it appeared some precincts had stray delegates decided by coin toss.
"Statistically, there is no outstanding information that could change the results and no way that Senator Sanders can overcome Secretary Clinton's advantage,” the campaign said.
A number of news outlets, including Fox News, have not yet formally called the contest for the former secretary of state.
Sanders said the results sent a “profound message” to the media and political establishment.
Anti-establishment overtones also were apparent on the Republican side, where Cruz claimed a more resounding victory in the state.
“Tonight is a victory for the grassroots. Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation,” Cruz told cheering supporters.
In the Republican campaign, Cruz fought hard in recent weeks to make up lost ground in the polls and was helped in part by a sophisticated ground operation. He also hammered Trump for his decision to skip last week's Republican debate.
Meanwhile, Rubio's stronger-than-expected third place finish was helped in large part by late deciders. An energized Rubio touted the results at a post-caucus rally.
“For months they told us we had no chance. … They told me I needed to wait my turn,” Rubio said. “But tonight … here in Iowa, the people in this great state sent a very clear message. After seven years of Barack Obama, we are not waiting any longer to take our country back.”
With almost all precincts reporting, Cruz had 28 percent, Trump had 24 percent and Rubio had 23 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson placed a distant fourth in the race with 9 percent, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul placed fifth with 5 percent.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the one-time front-runner on the Republican side, placed a disappointing sixth.
Still, Bush said Tuesday he’s looking to recover in New Hampshire.
“New Hampshire has a tendency to reset the race,” Bush told Fox News.
A big question heading into next week will be whether Trump’s second-place showing in Iowa affects his sizeable lead in the Granite State.
Trump, for his part, argued he beat initial expectations by placing second and predicted he'd still win in New Hampshire.
“We will go on to get the Republican nomination, and we will go on to easily beat Hillary or Bernie or whoever the hell they throw up there,” he said. He closed his speech by saying: "I think I might come here and buy a farm, I love it.”

Donald Trump admits skipping debate may have hurt him in Iowa

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump admitted Tuesday that his decision to skip the final debate before Monday's Iowa caucuses could have cost him victory in the Hawkeye State. 
Despite leading in most of the pre-caucus polls, the real estate billionaire finished second behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and barely held off Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who placed a close third.
"That could've been with the debate," Trump told reporters at a rally in Milford, N.H. "I think some people were disappointed that I didn't go into the debate."
Trump declined to participate in the Jan. 28 Fox News/Google debate in Des Moines due to a dispute with Fox News Channel. He cited the tone of press statements from the network about his possible pulling out of the debate, as well as issues with one of the debate moderators, Megyn Kelly.
Instead of participating in the debate, Trump held a fundraiser for veterans that raised $6 million. The candidate said Tuesday that he would make the same decision again, saying he "would never, ever give that up to go between first and second in Iowa."
Entrance polls conducted by Fox News showed that 55 percent of caucus-goers who made up their minds in the final few days chose to support Cruz or Rubio.
Later Tuesday, Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity that his campaign "didn't have much of a ground game because I didn't think I was going to be winning."
"In retrospect, we could have done much better with the ground game," Trump said, in an apparent slight to his Iowa state director Chuck Laudner.
Laudner had said in January he felt "fantastic about the ground game."

Hillary Clinton Cartoon

Cruz shrugs off Trump attacks in winning Iowa, but The Donald is hardly done

In the end, Iowa was a must-win state for Ted Cruz, and he pulled it out despite weeks of withering attacks from Donald Trump.
For Cruz, projecting the winner by Fox News and other networks, capturing the caucuses here is a bigger victory than just beating Trump by a few thousand votes. The press and the Republican power brokers originally viewed him as a middle-tier guy, a bomb-thrower in Washington, and not a charming personality to boot.
He stuck to his strategy of hard-line conservatism, courting evangelicals, bashing the media—and parrying Trump’s assaults better than any other Republican candidate.

Cruz appeared to be slipping in recent weeks as Trump questioned his Canadian birth and called him a nasty guy, and he had his worst debate in last week’s Fox faceoff in Iowa. But he had a resilient base of support in this state.

For Trump, the loss clearly dents his shield of invulnerability. But a billionaire mocked by much of the establishment showed he could mount a competitive race, he's far stronger in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and he has all the money he needs. Perhaps a dose of humility will be good for him.

It’s hard to know whether Trump skipping the Fox debate was a factor among late deciders, or his big-rallies-over-county-fairs approach. We do know that Cruz had a much stronger ground game, and with Iowa’s complicated caucuses, that still matters.

Rubio’s surprisingly strong third-place finish, which put him close to Trump, vindicates his strategy of trying to emerge as the establishment alternative. The Florida senator got traction at just the right time, brilliantly managed the expectations game, and comes out of Iowa (where he didn't play that hard) firmly in the top tier with Trump and Cruz, heading into better states for him.

But before we get completely swept away by the media hype, Iowa, with its strong evangelical vote, is a unique battleground. Four of the last GOP winners in Iowa have failed to win the nomination. In just eight days, Trump could be buoyed by a huge victory in New Hampshire. The Iowa afterglow is intense, but short-lived.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was leading Bernie Sanders by an extraordinarily thin margin, possibly avoiding the possibility of an 0-for-2 start in the state that crushed her hopes against Barack Obama. But let’s be honest: The race shouldn’t even be close. A former first lady, a former secretary of State, a Clinton, should clobber a 74-year-old socialist who hadn’t even been a member of the Democratic Party. But she is an establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year. Whatever the final numbers, this is a moral victory for Sanders and certification of his grass-roots appeal.

What’s striking among Republicans is how the last two Iowa winners, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, finished below 2 percent, along with once-hot contender Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie, who is betting his campaign on New Hampshire.
The early signs were good for Trump, as one wave of Fox entrance polls showed Trump barely trailing Cruz among evangelical Christians, Iowa’s key voting bloc, 26 to 24 percent—with Rubio at 21 percent. Those voters are Cruz’s key constituency, and perhaps he lost some crucial supporters to Ben Carson, who hung in at about 10 percent.
The entrance polls showed Trump dominating among voters whose most important quality was a candidate who “tells it like it is.” Cruz did best among voters seeking a candidate who “shares my values.” Rubio was strongest as the candidate who “can win in November.”
Demographically, Trump did best among voters with a high school education or less, while Rubio edged Cruz among college graduates and those who did postgraduate study. Cruz, not surprisingly, did best among very conservative voters, Trump scored highest with moderate voters, and Trump and Rubio were essentially tied among somewhat conservative voters.
On the Democratic side, according to those entrance polls, Hillary Clinton dominated among voters over 65, while Bernie Sanders clobbered her in the 17-to-29 age group.
Sanders decimated the former first lady among those most interested in an “honest and trustworthy” candidate and one who “cares about people like me.” Clinton creamed him for having “the right experience” and as someone who “can win in November.”

Trump fever has broken. Cruz out-organized him. Here's what's next

Imagine trying to explain America’s presidential selection process to an extraterrestrial.
The nation’s two major political parties entrust Iowa with beginning the elimination process – that one Midwestern state representing just 1 percent of the nation’s population, with an electorate not reflective of America writ large (Iowa’s population is whiter, more Protestant and decidedly less black and Hispanic than the rest of the country).
Moreover, it’s not much of a political bellwether. Jimmy Carter won the Democratic caucuses in 1976, as did Barack Obama in 2008. In modern times, George W. Bush is the lone Republican to parlay a caucus win into the presidency.
Yet here we are in 2016, once again giving this under-populated state an oversized role in the nation’s future.
Some observations about what transpired in Iowa, on the Republican side, on Monday night:
Mister Trump, Meet Mister Tyson. The former boxer is credited with saying that “everyone has a plan ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”
On Monday night, Trump was on the receiving end of said punch.
Yes, the turnout turned out to be a record high, as Trump had promised. But not all the newcomers flocked in his direction, as he also prophesized.
According to Fox News entrance polls, the late-deciders broke first to Marco Rubio, then Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and then Trump – one reason why Rubio finished a close third (much closer than expected) to the flamboyant developer.
One way to look at Trump’s bad night: going into the caucuses, Trump stood at 28.6 percent in the Real Clear Politics Average. He finished with only 24 percent on Caucus night.
Cruz Was Everything – But Likeable. Cruz organized Iowa like few Republicans ever have – 12,000 volunteers, 1,000 precincts, a pair of old college dorms rented and renamed “Camp Cruz” to house that army. Unlike Trump’s calculation that star power was an irresistible force, it was sweat equity that paid off: Cruz bumped his RCP average by about 4 points.
Credit Cruz with standing his ground: he didn’t back down on opposing the ethanol subsidy. He didn’t deviate from his game plan of courting evangelicals.
However, the game plan wasn’t glitch-free: three out of five GOP caucus-goers identified as evangelicals in this year’s Republican caucuses – a higher percentage than in 2012. Yet, per the Fox News entrance polls, this portion of the vote didn’t break as heavily for Cruz as anticipated.
This suggests a core problem for Cruz moving forward: he’s bright, organized and a methodical strategist. But he’s just not likeable beyond that base of religious and constitutional voters. He’ll be hard-pressed to finish second in New Hampshire, where the electorate is less devoutly Protestant and less conservative – and Trump may be particularly vengeful.
The Rubio Expectations Game. One other way the Iowa night seem alien to alien visitors: the ability for a non-winner to claim victory.  And In 2016, that’s Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whose surprisingly strong third-place finish confirms him as the biggest fish in the so-called “establishment lane.”
Rubio was a non-factor in Iowa as recently as a few weeks ago. But then he worked the state in person, invested heavily late in television  on the eve of the vote, and profited handsomely from the one-fifth of the GOP voters for whom electability was the prime concern.
Armchair quarterbacks will debate how much Rubio benefitted from Trump’s debate snub (didn’t work for Reagan in 1980, maybe also backfired on The Donald in 2016) plus Cruz’s controversial mailer.
Rubio won the expectations game. Let’s see if that translates into votes in New Hampshire and, more immediately, an influx of cash as donors contrast his over-performance to the anemic showing of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (at 2 percent, just a percentage point behind Jeb Bush).
Left Behind. Dr. Ben Carson finished fourth – a better showing than he might have anticipated a month ago when his campaign cratered.
Carson’s free-fall led to Cruz’s December surge; Carson’s slight recovery on Monday night – his core being evangelicals – likely kept Cruz from a bigger win.
To the adage that elections reflect change and turnover: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum won the last two GOP caucuses. On Monday night, neither cracked 3 percent. Huckabee quickly put his campaign on hiatus; Santorum likely won’t be far behind.
Change Gives Us . . . Continuity. For all the talk these past few months of how Iowa would be an opening salvo in a Trump-fueled revolution, reality proved otherwise.
Yes, a historically large GOP electorate struck a blow against Washington experience: Cruz, Trump and Rubio combined have all of ten years in federal government between them; they cornered three-fourth of Iowa’s vote.
However, the Iowa results were also a vote for more of the same.
Since 1988, the GOP caucuses have followed a familiar pattern – Iowans siding with a Republican who embodied the concept of “one of us.” Bob Dole, a son of Kansas, was a fellow Midwesterner. He was Iowa’s winner in 1988 and 1996. George W. Bush, Huckabee and Santorum all ran campaigns in which their personal faith and public policy ideas were DNA strands.
Given the choice of voting for Cruz, who worked the evangelic crowd in no uncertain terms (“Father God, Please . . . Awaken the Body of Christ”), Iowans went with the purer social conservative – not the wealthy guy from New York running as a born-again conservative, trying to win over the Midwestern crowd with his celebrity persona and flashy plane.
In the end, Cruz simply out-organized and out-thought Trump. Which is why Trump Fever is over – at least, until next week’s vote.   

Hillary, Bernie Race

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY SAYS CLINTON AHEAD OF SANDERS IN STATE DELEGATE COUNT WITH ONE PRECINCT OUTSTANDING; CLINTON NOT FORMALLY DECLARED WINNER

In a close race with Sanders, the Hillary campaign seemed a bit shell-shocked as a winner has yet to be declared in Iowa.
As Tom Harkin was warming up the crowd and getting ready for speeches from Bill and Chelsea Clinton, he seemed shocked to see Hillary take the stage.
Hillary marched up to the podium with Bill and Chelsea and was only one to speak before leaving the Iowa stage. Hillary never declares victory – only saying she was “breathing a big sigh of relief,” as if she won.
The Clintons skipped a rope line of screaming fans and scampered off into the night.

Cruz wins Iowa GOP caucuses; Clinton, Sanders race too close to call

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz swept to victory over Donald Trump in Iowa’s Republican caucuses Monday night — with Marco Rubio hard on his heels with a re-energized campaign — while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were locked in a virtual dead heat in the Democratic contest.
With all but 10 precincts reporting in the Democratic race early Tuesday, Clinton had 49.9 percent of the vote, while Sanders had 49.6 percent.
Iowa Democratic Party officials said early Tuesday that they were still gathering results from some precincts where those in charge failed to report results in a timely manner.
In at least three precincts, the Democratic outcome was so close that party officials ordered a coin toss to determine which candidate should receive an extra county convention delegate, a longstanding tiebreaking method. The Des Moines Register reported that Clinton won all three coin flips at precincts in Des Moines, Davenport, and Ames.

Regardless of the final outcome, the result reflected a strong showing for Sanders, who had trailed Clinton by nearly 30 points over the summer. Sanders said the results sent a “profound message” to the media and political establishment.
Cruz, too, cast his victory as a message to the establishment.
“Tonight is a victory for the grassroots. Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation,” Cruz told cheering supporters.
Speaking to supporters at Drake University, Clinton still sounded optimistic about the final result but did not declare victory outright.
“As I stand here tonight, breathing a big sigh of relief, thank you Iowa. I want you to know that I’ll keep standing up for you, keep fighting for you. Join me. Let’s go win that nomination,” she said.
Early Tuesday, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon declared victory of sorts, saying, "we believe strongly that we won tonight." Spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri added, "We feel like we have great momentum going into [the] New Hampshire [primary Feb. 9]. This was a very hard fought state."
Sanders noted that Iowa's 44 Democratic national convention delegates would be distributed almost evenly between the two candidates. The Associated Press reported that Clinton had captured at least 22 delegates to Sanders' 21, with one left to be decided.
Sanders touched on familiar themes during his speech, saying his campaign was about the people and “not billionaires buying elections.”
In the Republican campaign, Cruz fought hard in recent weeks to make up lost ground in the polls and was helped in part by a sophisticated ground operation. He also hammered Trump for his decision to skip last week's Republican debate.
While Trump finished second in the Hawkeye State, Florida Sen. Rubio finished a very close third with a stronger-than-expected showing in the Hawkeye State, helped in part by late-deciders.
His campaign also suggested Trump’s debate boycott helped change the dynamic in the race.
With all but one precinct reporting, Cruz had 28 percent, Trump had 24 percent and Rubio had 23 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson placed fourth in the race, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul placed fifth.
An energized Rubio touted the results at a post-caucus rally.
“For months they told us we had no chance. … They told me I needed to wait my turn,” Rubio said. “But tonight … here in Iowa, the people in this great state sent a very clear message. After seven years of Barack Obama, we are not waiting any longer to take our country back.”
Trump, for his part, argued he beat initial expectations by placing second and predicted he'd still win in New Hampshire next week.
“We will go on to get the Republican nomination, and we will go on to easily beat Hillary or Bernie or whoever the hell they throw up there,” he said. He closed his speech by saying: "I think I might come here and buy a farm, I love it.”
Republicans voted by private ballot. The state's 30 Republican delegates are awarded proportionally based on the vote, with at least eight delegates going to Cruz, seven to Trump and six to Rubio.
Two candidates dropped their bids after poor showings. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who was pulling in about 1 percent support, suspended his Democratic campaign Monday night. And on the GOP side, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also suspended his campaign.
Interest and turnout appeared to be high on both sides. Republican officials said there were more than 180,000 people at Monday's GOP caucuses, up from the previous high of about 121,000 in 2012. Several caucus sites remained open longer to accommodate long lines; some even ran out of registration forms or ballots.
Cruz rose from the middle of the Republican pack last year to overtake Trump on Monday. His victory disrupts Trump's front-runner narrative and could jolt the GOP race, where candidates have struggled for months to arrest Trump’s rise.
According to entrance polling of Republican caucus-goers conducted by Fox News, Cruz won by garnering the support of evangelical Christians and those who wanted a candidate who shares their values. Evangelical Christians made up 62 percent of Republican caucus-goers -- up from 56 percent in 2012 -- and of those, 33 percent backed the Texas senator.
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders overwhelmed Clinton among caucus-goers under 30, a group that he won 84 percent to 14 percent. However, that constituency only made up 18 percent of all Democratic caucus-goers.
On the other hand, 55 percent of all Democratic caucus-goers said they wanted the next president to continue Barack Obama's policies. Clinton won the support of 68 percent of that constituency.
The Iowa caucuses have had a mixed record in recent cycles, particularly on the Republican side, in picking the eventual nominees.
The GOP caucus winners in 2008 and 2012 were Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, respectively, neither of whom won the nomination.
Eight years ago, though, then-Sen. Barack Obama’s Iowa win in the Democratic race helped set him on the trajectory to claim first his party’s nomination, then the presidency.

Obama Iran Cartoon

Iran's supreme leader awards medals to troops who 'captured' U.S. sailors

Thank you President Obama!

Iran’s supreme leader has awarded medals to five members of the Iranian Navy whom he said “captured intruding” U.S. Navy sailors during a tense incident this month.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei awarded the Order of Fat’h medal to Admiral Ali Fadavi, the head of the navy of the Revolutionary Guards, and four commanders who seized the two U.S. Navy vessels, according to Reuters. Iran’s state media reported the news on Sunday.
In a tweet sent from his account Sunday, Khamenei misidentified those who were “captured” as being members of the Marines.
On Jan. 12, Iran captured the ten sailors whose boats “misnavigated” into Iranian waters, according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Though the sailors were released the following day, Iran released video of the sailors being captured, detained and apologizing for the incursion.
Though Iran initially accused the sailors of spying, Fadavi later said an investigation had established the sailors were led astray by "a broken navigation system" and the trespassing was "not hostile or for spying purposes".
The sailors were attempting to navigate from Kuwait to Bahrain when they crossed into Iranian waters.
In one of the more enduring images from the video of the capture, the sailors are shown kneeling on the decks of the boats, with their hands on their heads, all while being watched by armed Iranian troops. Though U.S. officials initially sought to downplay the encounter, Carter recently said the images made him “very, very angry.”
The Order of Fat'h has been given to Iranian war heroes, military commanders and politicians, especially those involved in the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted between 1980 and 1988.
Khamenei has said that Iran should remain wary of the U.S., even after the two enemies reached a deal on the future of Iran's nuclear program last summer.