National

How did Governor Elect, John Carney, use 484 words to say: "I didn't accomplish anything, but seeing the Pope was nice" ? Read on to find out.

This is interesting. Ted Cruz has literally gamified his Iowa ground game. It almost makes me want go to Tedcruz.org and sign up to see who in Delaware is the points king.

The Cruz mobile app, which game-ifies the campaign process — users win points for sharing their contact lists or for posting messages of support to Facebook and Twitter — has close to 30,000 downloads, according to Chris Wilson, head of analytics for the campaign.

The Republicans are stuck in the 90's:

According to CNN, the heckler stood up just a few feet from Clinton and shouted at her. Clinton rebuked her once, and then when the heckler tried again to get Hillary’s attention during a lull in the action, she started shouting again. That’s when Clinton shut her down. “You are very rude and I’m not never ever going to call on you. Thank you.” That shut down New Hampshire state Rep. Katherine Prudhomme O'Brien, who later admitted she was there to try and bring up Bill Clinton's sexual pecadilloes in the town hall.

How is Hillary responsible for Bill's indiscretions? It is the height of sexism to suggest that she is. This has been Sen. Rand Paul's hobbyhorse, saying that Hillary Clinton shouldn't be president because Bill Clinton is bad.

[J]effrey T. Kuhner, a WRKO radio host in Boston asked Paul if sexual harassment and assault claims against former president Bill Clinton “and her role in trying to cover it up and protect him” were a legitimate campaign issue. Paul initially replied that it is not “necessarily her fault,” that “her husband has committed serial infidelities,” but then slammed the former Secretary of State for having spoken out against sexual assaults in a recent campaign speech.

First off, this is the first time I have ever heard any Republican allege that Hillary herself was involved in covering up Bill's affair with Monica. All accounts, including such partisan accounts as the Starr Report, state unequivocally that Hillary was in the dark about it until Bill told her in August 1998, before his national address admitting the affair. Second, I don't get the Republican logic here: If one's husband has a consensual adulterous affair, that means the wife cannot ever speak out against or even oppose sexual assault? Third, if this is all they've got, Republicans better start planning for a 40 state wipeout and the loss of the House.

White Conservative Terrorists have attacked a federal building in Oregon and are illegally occupying it. Why?

They’re apparently upset at the conviction and upcoming jail sentences of a couple of fellow domestic terrorists for arson. They believe that the federal government has no constitutional authority to own land, that national parks are essentially illegal, and that men like them have a God-given right to mine, log and otherwise destroy whatever forest land they want.

The undisputed facts are that the terrorists have now illegally trespassed onto property that they do not own and have no claim to. I want these white conservative terrorists to be treated as with they were African Americans. I want these white conservative terrorists to be treated as if they were ISIS. They are to surrender to federal and/or local authorities immediately and evacuate the refuge forthwith. Any provocation shall be met with deadly force, and to be sure, a provocation is pointing a gun at anyone. Failure to comply shall eventually lead to the recapture of the refuge by federal and/or local authorities, during which time all terrorists shall be either killed or incapacitated.

People pay a lot of attention to the right track wrong direction number. They shouldn't. It no longer has any meaning. If it did, President Obama would not have been reelected, for you see 58% of the respondents saying the country was going in the wrong direction at the same time 53% of the voters reelected the President. No, what that number means now is 100% opposition from all members of the President's opposition party, coupled with those liberals, left leaning independents, progressives, and Democrats who are upset with Republican obstruction and growing income inequality and the power of corporations and billionaires, and Donald Trump. For example, I personally approve of the President's job performance, and will vote for the Democrat in the fall, but I think things in the country are going in the wrong direction. So the value of this statistic as a predictor for the presidential election is nil. It is more instructive to look at how everyone says they are doing personally. An end-of-year Economist/YouGov poll found that 63% of Americans surveyed said it was a pretty good year for themselves and their families. Those numbers suggest that the Democrat is still well positioned to win.

The HuffPost Pollster averages show Donald Trump with a double-digit lead and five candidates — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Jeb Bush — bunched within 7 points of each other for second place. For four of them (except Cruz who is currently leading in Iowa) the primary may make or break their chances. And it is not only about in what place they finish but the strength of their finish. If the establishment choices are all bunched together in the low teens or high single digits, that is a disaster for the establishment. If one or two of them finish at 20 and 15 behind Trump and Cruz, that is much better. If Christie or Kasich don't finish strong, they are gone.

Erica Grieder:

Some Republican operatives, [Jeff} Greenfield reports, are considering a particularly dramatic response. Trump himself has indicated, at several points, that he might run as a third-party candidate if the Republican Party denies him the nomination. Those threats have some resonance, because an independent Trump wouldn’t have to skim off many Republican voters to effectively doom the GOP nominee in the general. But the same would be true if Trump himself is the nominee. The only difference between the two scenarios is that Trump is self-obsessed, prone to snits and grudges, and has never shown the slightest concern for how his histrionics might affect other people. By contrast, someone like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney would pause to consider the potential consequences of their actions. A third-party run would likely guarantee Clinton’s election, and a coordinated defection among party insiders might lead to the end of the Republican Party as we know it. But if Trump somehow becomes the Republican nominee, I think Republicans need to take the risk. By doing so they might destroy their party, but Trump might destroy the country. Any party that would seriously nominate such a person for president is a party that should be put out to pasture, if not sent straight to the glue factory. Since June, Trump has caused more harm than most politicians manage in a lifetime. And if he had the power of the presidency? A few sweet nothings from Vladimir Putin and Trump would be tripping all over himself to give Alaska back to Russia. Trump’s sheer awfulness has already made it virtually impossible for me to make fun of Obama. It surely casts the relative risks of a Clinton presidency in a different light. She likely wouldn’t repeal Obamacare, but she can hardly make it worse.