Martin O'Malley ex-governor Cartoon

O'Malley, Sander criticize small Democratic debate schedule, suggest its rigged to favor Clinton

Two top Democratic candidates in the 2016 White House race suggested Friday night that party leaders have rigged the debate schedule in favor of frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

“Only four debates … before voters in our earliest states make their decision,” Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor, said at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis. “This sort of rigged process has never been attempted before.”
O’Malley is particularly concerned about the party having just one sanctioned debate each in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states in which primary votes are cast.
“That’s all we can afford?” O’Malley asked. “Is this how the Democratic Party selects its nominee?”
He also argued that limiting the total number of sanctioned Democratic debates to six, including two after the Iowa and New Hampshire votes, is allowing the rhetoric of Republicans candidates to go largely unchallenged.
“Republicans traffic in immigrant hate,” said O’Malley, who has been critical of the debate schedule since it was announced in early August. “We need debate.”
However, he made clear to reporters afterward that he thought the schedule helps Clinton.
Fellow 2016 Democratic challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Independent, was also at the summer meeting and told The Washington Post that he agrees with O’Malley’s argument that the DNC has rigged the debate process.
Sanders has recently been gaining ground on Clinton, but he and O’Malley need debates to get out their message because neither has the estimated tens of million that Clinton has to spend on advertising.
And most political strategists think that frontrunners have the most to lose in debates because they are under constant attack by the challengers.
The wildcard in the Democratic primary is whether Vice President Biden enters the race.
Donors and other Biden backers have been ramping up efforts.
Josh Alcorn, senior adviser for the super-PAC Draft Biden 2016, told Fox News on Sunday that Biden has the potential backing but would have to enter the race before the first debate, Oct. 13, to catch up with the other candidates.
“He may not have the financial resources, but there is a ground swell of support,” Alcorn said. “I think having the vice president on that debate stage is an important part of the campaign.”
The DNC has said its candidates are being given ample opportunity to be on the same stage to debate, defending the schedule.
Clinton has 47.8 percent of the vote, compared to 26.3 percent of Sanders, 14 percent for Vice President Biden, 1.5 percent for O’Malley and 1.3 percent for former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, according to an averaging of polls by the nonpartisan website RealClearPoltics.com.

Texas investigators search for motive behind killing of sheriff's deputy

Texas investigators were trying to determine on Sunday what may have motivated a 30-year-old man accused of ambushing a suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy filling his patrol car with gas in what authorities believe was a targeted killing.

Shannon J. Miles was charged Saturday with capital murder in the killing of Darren Goforth, 47, a 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Goforth had gone to the station in Cypress, a middle-class to upper-middle class suburban area of Harris County that is unincorporated and located northwest of Houston, after responding to a routine car accident earlier Friday.
Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman said the attack was “clearly unprovoked,” and there is no evidence so far that Goforth knew Miles. Investigators have no information from Miles that would shed light on his motive, Hickman said.
"Our assumption is that he was a target because he wore a uniform," the sheriff said.
The killing has brought out strong emotions from the local law enforcement community, with Hickman likening it to the heightened tension over the treatment of African-Americans by police.
The nationwide "Black Lives Matter" movement formed after the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, has sought sweeping reforms of policing. Related protests erupted recently in Texas after a 28-year-old Chicago area black woman, Sandra Bland, was found dead in a county jail about 50 miles northwest of Houston three days after her arrest on a traffic violation. Texas authorities said she committed suicide but her family is skeptical that she would have taken her own life.
Hickman and Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson on Saturday pushed back against police criticism, saying there must not be open warfare on law enforcement officials.
"We've heard Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter. Well, cops' lives matter, too," Hickman said.
Local law enforcement officers were worried after the Goforth killing that others could be targeted, he said.
"It gives us some peace knowing that this individual is no longer at large and that he wasn't somebody that would be targeting the rest of the community," Hickman said.
Miles is likely to be arraigned in court on Monday.

Bush fundraisers exit campaign amid sagging poll numbers, Miami says move voluntary

Three of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s fundraising consultants have left the campaign, Fox News confirmed Saturday.

The consultants are Kris Money, Trey McCarley and Debbie Alexander, and they voluntarily left the campaign Friday, according to multiple sources.
Politico first reported the departures and suggested they were the result of personality conflicts and concerns about the strength of the campaign.
However, a Bush campaign source attempted Saturday to minimize the impact of the departures by saying the consultants remain involved in multiple projects outside of the campaign.
In addition, Bush spokesman Tim Miller told Fox News: "Governor Bush has the widest and deepest fundraising operation of any candidate in the field.”
He also said Ann Herberger, a longtime aide with more than two decades of experience in state and national politics, will continue to lead fundraising operations at campaign headquarters in Miami.
Bush, a former Florida governor, was the 2016 GOP presumptive frontrunner. And he had a superior fundraising advantage over essentially all of the other candidates in the party’s huge primary field, in large part because of his family name and connections with Washington Republicans.
Bush and the super-PAC Right to Rise raised a combined $114 million in the first quarter of this year, according to federal records, meeting often-talked-about expectations that the operation could indeed raise that much money.
However, Bush’s poll number have steadily declined since billionaire businessman and first-time candidate Donald Trump entered the race in mid-June.
"This is the time of year that campaigns make staffing changes before settling a final team going forward," Joe Desilets, a Republican strategist and managing partner at the Washington firm 21st & Main, said Saturday. "Jeb is far and away the fundraising leader in the race and has announced other major fundraisers joining his team. ... If Jeb starts dropping in fundraising, it may prove to be a bigger deal, but ... I don't see this as a major problem going forward."
Bush led the GOP field in mid-July with 17.8 percent of the vote, but is now at 9.8 percent, behind Trump at 23.5 percent and retired Dr. Ben Carson at 10.3 percent.
Trump has aggressively and consistently attacked Bush as the frontrunner, criticizing several of his positions including those on immigration and federal spending on women’s health.
Trump’s attacks have also been more personal, saying Bush is “low energy.”
Meanwhile, Bush appears to be taking a non-confrontational approach by largely not responding to the attacks and referring to himself as a “joyful tortoise."
Money, McCarley and Alexander will continue to work for Right to Rise, sources also told Fox News.

Sanders gains on Clinton in latest Iowa poll

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is continuing to gain on Hillary Clinton in Iowa, and is now within 7 points of the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race, according to a newly released poll.

Clinton remains the first choice of 37 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers, while sanders is the pick for 30 percent, according to the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll released Saturday.
"It looks like what people call the era of inevitability is over,” said Pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. “[Clinton] has lost a third of the support that she had in May, so anytime you lose that much that quickly it’s a wake-up call."
This is the first time the former secretary of state has seen her support fall under 50 percent among Democrats. The most recent Iowa Poll in May had Clinton leading the field with 57 percent, Sanders at 16 percent and Biden at 8 percent.
"What this new poll shows is that the more Iowans get to know Bernie, the better they like him and what he stands for," Sanders' spokesman Michael Braggs said. "We've seen the same thing in New Hampshire and across the country."
Vice President Joe Biden remains a choice among caucus-goers, even though he has yet to decide if he plans to run. Biden captured 14 percent of the vote, way ahead of candidates Martin O’Malley with 3 percent, Jim Webb at 2 percent, and Lincoln Chafee at 1 percent.
Biden also has the highest favorable rating among the field at 79 percent, compared with 77 percent for Clinton and 73 percent for Sanders.
Sanders’ poll numbers are also being buoyed by a group of voters similar to the ones attracted to President Obama in 2008: young people, liberals and first-time caucus-goers. In the latest poll, Sanders draws 50 percent of the support of those under the age of 45, well above Clinton’s 27 percent and Biden’s 8 percent.
While Clinton’s support has continually dropped among Iowa caucusgoers from 56 percent in January to 37 percent in the latest poll, Steve McMahon, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist told the Des Moines Register, "it's still early, and Hillary Clinton's done this before. She knows what it takes to win."

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Why Donald Trump’s Fox News War May Make Viewers Rage Against the Network

It’s Donald Trump’s world, and Roger Ailes is just living in it.

That’s the message Trump sent the Fox chairman on Monday when he ended his ceasefire with the de facto king of conservative media. Trump’s latest round of figurative shots fired at network star Megyn Kelly — and Roger Ailes’ bold, forceful response — sets up what TheWrap previously reported as the real 2016 campaign: Trump vs. Ailes.

“It’s always hard to get inside the head of Donald Trump,” veteran reporter Mark Feldstein told TheWrap. “The irony is he’s almost taking a page from the Murdoch-Ailes playbook in his campaign in that Fox’s whole approach is ‘we’re the grievance-filled underdog against the establishment and elites; Trump is using Jiu-Jitsu to try and turn things against the very network that invented it.”

Also Read: Donald Trump vs. Roger Ailes: How Fox News Chief Used Debate to Strike Against GOP Frontrunner

While the media and political pundits collectively predict Trump’s war against Fox is suicidal for his White House hopes, Feldstein said not so fast.

“He’s not doing this blindly; he knows what he’s doing and there’s a calculus behind everything he’s done and every time he says something that’s more and more wild, everyone predicts that’s the end of him, but he only grows stronger. The conventional wisdom is it’s suicidal, but everything Trump’s done that conventional wisdom said was suicidal has only helped him.”

Also Read: Donald Trump Hits Back at Roger Ailes: Megyn Kelly Is Not a 'Quality Journalist'

Feldstein, who teaches journalism at University of Maryland, suggested the latest Trump-Fox fight might be his big play for the angry, alienated white male vote. “He’s sort of criticizing Fox for employing Megyn Kelly and letting her get away with, as he put it, unfair treatment.”

Trump might be going after a particular slice of the electorate, but going against the voice of the GOP is much bigger than just angry, white men — it’s a shotgun pass for the growing anti-establishment Republican voter, whom Trump is betting big on by hoping they view Fox News as the personification of the establishment.

And it might work.

The Trump supporter is the Fox News viewer on steroids — fed up with the GOP congress and not-conservative-enough Republican presidential contenders. And sensing that Rupert Murdoch and Ailes have no interest in Trump’s candidacy being anything more serious than a short-term ratings boon, Trump made the calculated decision to fight the machine; a machine that aside from its brief romance with the Tea Party, is the establishment.

Also Read: Roger Ailes Fires Back at Donald Trump's 'Disturbing,' 'Crude' Megyn Kelly Attack

Just look down Fox News’ roster and you’ll see figures who represent a cardboard cutout Republican: Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, former George W. Bush press secretary Dana Perino, former GOP campaign aide Andrea Tantaros, Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carson, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, frequent guest and editor of the Weekly Standard Bill Kristol. Oh, let’s not forget, GOP presidential contenders Mike Huckabee and John Kasich used to host programs at Fox News.

Hell, Fox News even dubbed Trump a one-man Tea Party machine (the network declined to comment for this story).

But Christopher Hahn, a radio host and former aide to Senator Chuck Schumer, believes Trump’s battle against Fox will backfire.

Also Read: Fox News Unleashes Angry Anchors on 'Totally Out of Control' Donald Trump

“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel or pixels by the freight car load,” he told TheWrap. “He’s picking a fight with a multimedia giant. You can never win that fight.”

But Trump has won every fight so far: against illegal immigrants, against war hero John McCain, against Fox News after the first GOP debate, and of course, against Jeb Bush and the rest of the Republican candidates who were supposed to be leading the pack.

And in the full-on war between Trump and Fox News, the Donald’s success or failure rests with Ailes.

What happens when Trump stops going on Fox News, like he did the last time around, and the ratings take a dip while other networks hosting Trump soar? Will the legendary ratings hound still stand with his star Kelly, or backpedal in order to squeeze every last ounce out of the Donald orange?

“In a way you can ask the same question about both Trump and Fox: Which really matters more, their business interest or their political advancement?” Feldstein said, concluding that the more Trump injects Fox into the 2016 arena, the more it legitimizes Fox as a political player rather than just a “marginal network of crazy ideologues.”

To find out which set of ideologues wins the war, one figure remains out front as a media star and the champion of fed-up voters.

Donald Trump.

Trashed: Study finds students toss veggies mandated by federal school lunch program

Public schools are continuing to serve the federally mandated fruits and vegetables, but a new study claims the fresh produce is going into trash cans more than tummies.

Since 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has implemented a requirement – widely championed by First Lady Michelle Obama – that children must select either a fruit or vegetable for school lunches subsidized by the federal government. However, a new report published this week by researchers at the University of Vermont found that even though students did add more fruits and vegetables to their plates, as the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” enforces, “children consumed fewer [fruits and vegetables] and wasted more during the school year immediately following implementation of the USDA rule.”
The report, entitled “Impact of the National School Lunch Program on Fruit and Vegetable Selection,” noted that average waste increased from a quarter cup to more than one-third of a cup per tray. Observing students at two northeastern elementary schools during more than 20 visits to each, researchers took photos of students’ trays after they chose their items, as they were exiting the lunch line and again as they went by the garbage cans.
“The architects of the Act want their children and schoolchildren across America to eat healthy, hearty meals," Joe Colangelo, director of the product testing and consumer advocacy organization Consumers’ Research, told FoxNews.com. "Unfortunately, our government does not have a perfect record of influencing the eating habits of American citizens.”

  First Lady Michelle Obama eating fries and a hamburger.

“It's this kind of micro-management of our lives that conservatives always warn about and new media claim won't happen."
- Dan Gainor, Media Research Center

The study's conclusions jibe with widespread complaints from school officials and parents that the program encourages food waste. It has also drawn criticism for cost, difficulty in implementing and lack of appeal for students.
Parents, not schools, should decide what their children eat, said Dan Gainor, of the Media Research Center
“Schools can't tell what eating disorders or personal preferences each student has,” Gainor remarked. “It's this kind of micro-management of our lives that conservatives always warn about and new media claim won't happen. Until it does.”
A spokesperson for the USDA emphasized that the observation that went into the Vermont study was conducted in 2013, only a year after the program was put into practice, and said several other studies since then have indicated that kids are indeed eating healthier as a result of updated nutrition standards for school meals. A 2014 study by Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that children actually consumed more fruits and vegetables in the wake of the government’s new guidelines.
“Ninety-five percent of schools are successfully serving healthier meals, and in 2014, schools saw a net nationwide increase in revenue from school lunches of approximately $450 million," the USDA spokesperson said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "For those schools still working to implement the standards, we’ve provided training, resources and flexibility."
While a large year-end spending bill passed by Congress last December didn’t pave the way for schools to completely withdraw from the USDA program, it did give them the green light to ease  standards slated to take effect in 2017 regarding whole grains and salt intake. Congress is set to vote next month on whether to re-approve the school lunch initiative.
Despite the backlash, the school lunch regulations have supporters who applaud it as a step in the right direction.
“Without guidelines, we had vending machines with soda, chips and gummy bears and fast food restaurants serving lunch in elementary schools too,” said Stacey Antine, a registered dietician and founder of HealthBarn USA, a program that teaches children to grow their own produce and the importance of healthy eating. “We know that good nutrition is important for learning, good behavior and healthy habits for weight maintenance, so it is important that all children have access to healthy foods.”