Saudi Arabia announces anti-terror alliance of Islamic nations

The pot calling the kettle black? Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and its law requires that all citizens be Muslims.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia –  Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that 34 nations have agreed to form a new "Islamic military alliance" to fight terrorism with a joint operations center based in the kingdom's capital, Riyadh.
The announcement published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency said the alliance will be Saudi-led and is being established because terrorism "should be fought by all means and collaboration should be made to eliminate it." The statement said Islam forbids "corruption and destruction in the world" and that terrorism constitutes "a serious violation of human dignity and rights, especially the right to life and the right to security."
The new counterterrorism coalition includes nations with large and established armies such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt as well as war-torn countries with embattled militaries such as Libya and Yemen. African nations that have suffered terrorist attacks such as Mali, Chad, Somalia and Nigeria are also members.
Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Shiite Iran, is not part of the coalition. Saudi Arabia and Iran support opposite sides of in the wars raging in Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia is currently leading a military intervention in Yemen against Shiite Houthi rebels and is part of the U.S.-led coalition bombing the Sunni extremist Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
At a rare news conference, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman said the new Islamic military coalition will develop mechanisms for working with other countries and international bodies to support counterterrorism efforts. He said their efforts would not be limited to only countering the Islamic State (ISIS) group.
"Currently, every Muslim country is fighting terrorism individually ... so coordinating efforts is very important," he said.
He said the joint operations center will be established in Riyadh to "coordinate and support military operations to fight terrorism" across the Muslim world.
Smaller member-states included in the coalition are the archipelago of the Maldives and the island-nation of Bahrain. Other Gulf Arab countries such as Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are also in the coalition, though notably absent from the list is Saudi Arabia's neighbor Oman. But Iraq and Syria whose forces are battling to regain territory taken by the Islamic State group and whose governments are allied with Iran are not in the coalition.
Benin, while it does not have a majority Muslim population, is also a member of this new counterterrorism coalition. All the group's members are also part of the larger Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is headquartered in Saudi Arabia.

With rise in polls, Cruz in Tuesday's GOP debate

Media trying to turn Cruz and Trump against each other?

The once-friendly rivalry between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump is getting edgy as the Texas senator cuts into the business mogul’s lead, setting up a potential showdown in the GOP presidential primary debate Tuesday.
Cruz has largely avoided public attacks on Trump -- likely in part to avoid his withering counter-attacks and also in hopes of gathering Trump supporters should he falter or quit the race.  
Trump has mostly left Cruz alone -- at least until recently, when Cruz apparently criticized him at private fundraisers.
The Texan then pulled ahead in Iowa, according to polls released over the past few days.
“He said it behind my back. Somebody taped that conversation,” Trump said about Cruz on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I don't think he's qualified to be president. …  I don't think he's got the right judgment.”
Tuesday's debate, hosted by CNN, will be the fourth of 12 sanctioned GOP White House primary debates and the final one of the year.
It also comes less than 50 days before the Iowa Caucus, the first voting in the 2016 election cycle.
Cruz and Trump will be joined on the main stage in Las Vegas by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
On Sunday, Trump suggested that Cruz’s tactics on Capitol Hill are devoid of the compromising skills needed to run the country.
“He goes in there … like a bit of a maniac,” Trump said.
“You never get things done that way. You can't walk into the Senate and scream and call people liars and not be able to cajole and get along with people. … That's the problem with Ted.”
When the reports surfaced last week of Cruz at New York fundraisers questioning Trump’s judgement, Cruz promptly tweeted: “The Establishment's only hope: Trump & me in a cage match. Sorry to disappoint.”
And within hours of Trump’s attack Sunday, Cruz responded on Twitter by posting a link to the song “Maniac” from the movie “Flashdance” and writing: "In honor of my friend @realDonaldTrump and good-hearted maniacs everywhere ..."
CNN will also host a debate for the second-tier GOP candidates -- former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former New York Gov. George Pataki.
The network said Paul squeezed into the main debate “by showing viability in Iowa in a Fox News poll released Sunday morning.”
Christie returns to the main stage, largely because of his strong poll numbers in early-voting state New Hampshire.
Carson last month surged in national polls and briefly held second place behind Trump in Iowa. But his campaign has since plummeted roughly 12 percentage points, from 24.8 to 12.6 percent.
Bush is also looking for a comeback, after being considered the presumptive frontrunner early in the election cycle. However, his campaign has failed to catch fire, despite its infrastructure and fundraising prowess.
Rubio has also improved his poll rankings in recent weeks but is competing with Cruz for essentially the same voters, which could bring fireworks to the debate.
Cruz's national poll numbers didn't reach double-digits until early November, according to a RealClearPoltics.com averaging.
But he could indeed win Iowa, considering his support among evangelicals and other social-conservative voters is similar to that of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who in 2008 and 2012, respectively, won the caucus despite average numbers in national polls.
A Fox News Poll released Sunday showed Cruz edging Trump in Iowa, 28-26 percent among likely caucus-goers. The poll was taken Dec. 7-10 and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
Cruz has a 10-point lead over Cruz according to a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, which previously had him trailing Trump in Iowa by 11 percentage points.

Strategy Cartoon

School principal bans Santa, Thanksgiving and Pledge of Allegiance (In America?)

Principal Jaela Kim, of PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Santa Claus is banned. The Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited. “Harvest festival” has replaced Thanksgiving, and “winter celebrations” substitute for Christmas parties.
New principal Eujin Jaela Kim has given PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a politically correct scrub-down, to the dismay of teachers and parents.
“We definitely can’t say Christmas, nothing with Christmas on it, nothing with Santa,” PTA President Mimi Ferrer said administrators told her. “No angels. We can’t even have a star because it can represent a religious system, like the Star of David.”
Kim, 33, did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment.
A memo last month from assistant principal Jose Chaparro suggested a “harvest festival instead of Thanksgiving or a winter celebration instead of a Christmas party.” He urged staff to “be sensitive of the diversity of our families. Not all children celebrate the same holidays.”
Ninety-five percent of the 1,600 kids at PS 169 are Asian or Hispanic. This is what happens when the the minority over-rule the majority.

Watchdog group reportedly calls for probe of Clinton relationship with firm tied to son-in-law

A conservative watchdog group will call for a federal investigation Monday into Hillary Clinton's actions toward a deep-sea mining company tied to her son-in-law, according to a published report.
According to Time magazine, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), plans to file a complaint with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics alleging that Clinton gave Neptune Minerals "special access to the State Department based upon the company’s relationships with Secretary Clinton’s family members and donors to the Clinton Foundation."
The complaint comes two weeks after emails released by the State Department show that Clinton, now the Democratic presidential front-runner, ordered a senior State Department official to look into the request from Marc Mezvinsky.
Mezvinsky, a partner in a New York hedge fund and the husband of Clinton's daughter Chelsea, had received an email in May 2012 from investor Harry Siklas asking if he could help set up contacts with Clinton or other State Department officials.
That August, Clinton relayed a copy of the investor's email to Mezvinsky to Thomas Nides, then a deputy secretary of state and now vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, a major New York financial services firm. "Could you have someone follow up on this request which was forwarded to me?" Clinton asked Nides. He replied: "I'll get on it."
At the time, Clinton was advocating for an Obama administration push to win Senate approval for a sweeping law of the sea treaty. The pact would have aided U.S. mining companies scouring for minerals in international waters, but the Republican-dominated Senate blocked it.
The emails do not show whether Clinton or other State Department officials met with Siklas or with Neptune executives. Federal ethics guidelines warn government employees to "not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual," but there are no specific provisions prohibiting officials from considering requests prompted by relatives.
In the email, Siklas also said that his then-employer, Goldman Sachs, was representing Neptune. Before joining Eaglevale, Mezvinsky had also worked for eight years at Goldman, partly during Siklas' tenure there between 2004 and 2007. Members of the influential New York firm were one of Clinton's top funders in her 2008 presidential race, giving more than $225,000 that cycle. The firm has also been a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million.
"We believe that requests like this from anyone other than Goldman Sachs and her son-in-law were not passed along," FACT Executive Director Matt Whitaker told Time, "so there was a preference given in her duty as Secretary of State in comparison to other requests."
Whitaker said the Office of Government Ethics could refer the matter to the Justice Department once it conducts an investigation into the emails.

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton 'killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity'

Donald Trump claimed Sunday that Hillary Clinton "killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity" with her decisions as secretary of state, seemingly shocking his interviewer.

In a "Fox News Sunday" interview, Trump said Clinton and President Barack Obama's foreign-policy decisions in Africa and the Middle East resulted in the deaths of "hundreds of thousands" of people.

"She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies. You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt, what happened with Egypt, a total mess."

"She was truly — if not the — one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of the country," he added. "She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity."

Wallace pushed Trump to clarify what he meant.

"The Middle East is a total disaster under her," Trump said.

Trump was responding to an interview this week in which Clinton said Trump's plan to temporarily ban most Muslims from traveling to the US was dangerous.

"He has gone way over the line. And what he’s saying now is not only shameful and wrong — it’s dangerous,” Clinton said.

The former secretary of state said Trump's proposal "plays right into the hands of terrorists" by alienating Muslims in Western countries and framing terrorism as a clash between Islam and the West.

“I don’t say that lightly, but it does. He is giving them a great propaganda tool, a way to recruit more folks from Europe and the United States," Clinton said. "And because it’s kind of crossed that line, I think everybody and especially other Republicans need to stand up and say, ‘Enough. You've gone too far.'"

Ted Cruz poised to steal Iowa from Donald Trump

Ted Cruz shot to a 10-point lead over Donald Trump in the latestBloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, putting him in prime position to win the first-in-the-nation Republican caucus on Feb. 1. But the Texas Senator may be even stronger than the top-line numbers suggest. A deeper look into the poll's crosstabs suggests that Cruz is poised to draw away even more of Trump's supporters—and that Trump may have difficulty luring those who currently favor Cruz.
Until now, Trump's great source of strength has been his support from voters without a college degree. One reason Trump has been able to maintain an overall lead in most national polls since last summer is that, as Ron Brownstein has pointed out, blue-collar workers have coalesced around him, while white-collar workers with at least a college degree have split their support among several candidates. However, the new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll shows that Cruz, for the first time, is winning both non-college voters (Cruz 32, Trump 23, Ben Carson 13) and college voters (Cruz 29, Trump 18, Carson 12) alike.Of course, voter preference is fluid and the Iowa caucuses are still six weeks away. But Cruz's strategy of embracing, rather than attacking, Trump—even after Trump makes controversial or offensive statements—appears to have served him well, at least so far. In the new poll, respondents who say they support Trump have an extremely positive view of Cruz: 73 percent view him favorably, while 18 percent view him unfavorably. Asked to state their second-choice preference, these Trump supporters overwhelming pick Cruz (49 percent), with Rubio (16 percent) a distant second. If Trump falters or alienates his current supporters, they appear quite open to supporting Cruz.
But the reverse is less true: Cruz supporters aren't nearly as enthused at the prospect of backing Trump. Overall, they do view him positively. Sixty percent have a favorable view of Trump, versus 33 percent who view him unfavorably. Yet asked to state their second choice of candidate, Cruz supporters are about as likely to favor Ben Carson (26 percent) as they are Trump (25 percent). So Trump may have a hard time climbing back into the lead, especially if he goes on the attack against Cruz, as he did over the weekend when he told CNN he had "far better judgment than Ted."

Trump could, of course, look elsewhere to grow his support. But he may have a hard time luring people outside his base of anti-establishment male voters. Women voters, for example, could be a hard sell. Call it the "Megyn Kelly Effect": women in the poll more commonly prefer Cruz (28 percent) and Carson (16 percent) to Trump (13 percent). As strange as it may sound, maybe Trump should consider a pivot to the center and a more moderate tone.

Des Moines Register Poll Bias?

This is the kind of trash cartoons the Des Moines Register's Paper puts out.