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"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." That's how Harry Truman downplayed the importance of friendships in politics. But at a certain point, do poor personal relations impede a president's ability to get things done? On today's Morning Joe, after rolling a clip in which Donald Trump called Ted Cruz a disliked and "very nasty guy" who can't make deals, a discussion ensued as to whether Cruz's personality would be an impediment to his effectiveness as president. Joe Scarborough was particularly harsh in his assessement, saying "it's one thing being an outsider; it's another thing being a...

A most interesting and informative bio of Donald J. Trump!!!

"If you don't straighten out your marriage when the war's over, I'll come down from Heaven and kick you in the ass/"~Fr. Emil Kapuan to a fellow POW, before being led to the infamous "death house" in North Korea's Pyoktong prison camp.It was through sheer grit, Faith, and humor that Fr. Kapaun inspired hundreds of fellow captives through imprisonment in one of North Korea's most infamous POW camps in 1951, and it is estimated that he saved several hundred lives before ultimately losing his own. Now, the Vatican is taking a close look at the Pilsen, KS native and Medal...

Editor's note: This column is an excerpt from Crystal Wright's new book, "Con Job: How Democrats Gave Us Crime, Sanctuary Cities, Abortion Profiteering, and Racial Division."When was the last time anyone heard the "Reverend" Al Sharpton give a sermon? I mean a real one, not a rant that incites racial unrest. Ever since Sharpton came to the defense of Tawana Brawley in 1987, knowing she HAD lied in accusing white men of raping her, he's been a professional race profiteer. Not only did Tawana lie, she lied big time: spreading dog feces on herself then hiding in a trash can...

Moscow, January 18, Interfax - Russian sculptors have frozen the project of a Christ statue in Syria. "We were planning [it], and there were talks to create a Christ statue of a relevantly large size. As of now, it has been frozen at the stage of a working 8-meter model, which was planned to be enlarged afterwards. Perhaps, it's pointless talking about this story, as nobody knows where the current events will eventually lead," Russian People's Artist sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov said in a live broadcast of the Russkaya Sluzhba Novostey (Russian News Service) radio. Shcherbakov also revealed that another statue...

Producers of certain crudes from Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and Iraq are bracing for worse to come as Iran - now free of international sanctions - prepares to offload hefty supplies of heavy sour grades onto export markets. Some cargoes of heavy Mexican crude are trading for less than $13 a barrel, and downside price momentum for hard-to-refine grades looks set to intensify.... This could act as an additional weight on benchmarks Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures, which have slumped roughly 20 percent since the start of the year to prices under $29 a barrel. ..."The drastic fall in...

Florida Sheriff Grady Judd is urging residents in his county to arm up, stressing that it is "more important to have a gun in your hand than a cop on the phone." Judd is Sheriff of Polk County. According to Fox News, "Judd believes guns allow citizens to defend themselves when police cannot." Moreover, he wants criminals to know that citizens in his county will defend themselves. Following an incident where a home invasion suspect was shot earlier this month, Judd said, "If you are foolish enough to break into someone's home, you can expect to be shot in Polk...

Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky's phone confidante, presumably is in a position to know when she claims Bubba has had "affairs" with thousands of women. Our professional Secret Service Agents need their own resident, Centers for Disease Control infection control officer to protect them from Bubba. When you have sex with someone, you are having sex with everyone they have had sex with for the last tenyears, and everyone they and their partners have had sex with for the last ten years. - Surgeon General C. Everett Koop MD The formula for the Secret Service's epidemilogical exposure risk from Bubba, where,...

PARIS (AP) -- French President Francois Hollande pledged Monday to redefine France's business model and declared what he called "a state of economic and social emergency," unveiling a 2-billion-euro ($2.2 billion) plan to revive hiring and catch up with a fast-moving world economy. The measures he proposed, however, are relatively modest, and he said they would not "put into question" the 35-hour workweek. With his country under a state of emergency since extremist attacks in November, Hollande did not seek to assume any new emergency powers over the economy. In an annual speech to business leaders, Hollande laid out plans...

The Democratic Party’s Choice: Lenin or Nurse Ratched But either way, the Democratic Party is the Obama Party. January 18, 2016 Daniel Greenfield 10 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. Two haggard old Democrats took to the stage at a debate hosted by Google, NBC and the non-convicted members of the Congressional Black Caucus to argue over whether America should be run by Vladimir Lenin or Nurse Ratched. If looks could kill, the glazed hatred in the eyes of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would have slain...

Big banks are cringing as crude oil is crumbling. Firms on Wall Street helped bankroll America's energy boom, financing very expensive drilling projects that ended up flooding the world with oil. Now that the oil glut has caused prices to crash below $30 a barrel, turmoil is rippling through the energy industry and souring many of those loans. Dozens of oil companies have gone bankrupt and the ones that haven't are feeling enough financial stress to slash spending and cut tens of thousands of jobs. Three of America's biggest banks warned last week that oil prices will continue to create...

Los Angeles residents of impoverished Chinatown were shocked to learn on January 17 that the Walmart they pleaded for years to get would be shut down at 7 p.m. Sunday evening due to the city’s new $15 minimum wage ordinance, and union harassment. (Update: The closure was described by the company as one of 154 closures “that took into account a number of factors, including financial performance as well as strategic alignment with long-term plans.”) Immigrant Hispanic and Asian residents of central Los Angeles campaigned for years for a “big box” retailer to locate in their economically depressed neighborhood to...

About 10 union activists protested Thursday outside the Midland headquarters of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The issue was the free-market think tank's involvement in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that could make it illegal to force government employees to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. The protesters were holding signs from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). From 2005 to 2013, the SEIU had a dues skimming scheme by which the union collected more than $34 million from home-based caregivers, many who were were caring for family members or friends. Progress Michigan,...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is using special decree powers to declare an economic emergency in the oil-dependent nation. The decree giving Maduro 60 days to enact sweeping reform was published Friday in the official gazette just hours before the president is expected to deliver his annual state of the union address.

GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump will speak at Liberty University’s first convocation of 2016. The event is scheduled to begin at 10:30 AM EST.

Berkshire Hathaway is continuing this month string of Phillips 66 stock purchases, and Warren Buffett's conglomerate now controls 12.9 percent of the oil refiner. Berkshire filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday that disclosed purchases of another 1.6 million Phillips 66 shares. Buffett's company has now bought nearly 7.5 million shares of Houston-based Phillips 66 this month....

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Friday he thinks Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. "I‘m gonna say this and I know people are going to scratch their heads and go ‘what?’ but I don’t think he can [be stopped]," Steele said on 1210 WPHT in an interview posted by BuzzFeed News. "That window has closed and I think Donald Trump effectively closed it over the last couple of months." "You tell me who stops him and when do they do it," he added, noting Trump‘s strong positions in the polls. "I don‘t see how...

On the Sunday broadcast of "Justice" on Fox News Channel, host Judge Jeanine Pirro criticized Nikki Haley for targeting GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the GOP response to President Barack Obama's last State of the Union address on Tuesday. In Pirro's "Opening Statement" segment, she directed her ire at Haley for attacking a fellow Republican instead of attacking the Democratic Party's "so-called leadership." Pirro urged the South Carolina governor to get behind Trump because he is the party's front-runner. The Republican party is in real trouble. They proved it to all of us this week. Their primary strategy as...

GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 97% posted an attack-ad on Twitter before the Democratic debate on Sunday night, “As the ‪#DemDebate begins, Republicans have to wonder which team ‪@realDonaldTrump would play for.” Attached to Cruz’s tweet was a link to a YouTube video, which is a montage of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump praising Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton during interviews in the past. “She really works hard,” Trump stated in one of the old interviews. “I think she does a good job.” “They are just really terrific people,” he said of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. “I like them...

I drove up from Yuma to Las Vegas today, to go to the Industry day at the Range tomorrow.  It is nice to be one of the media invited to this event, which most of the industry from around the world uses to highlight and show off the latest in technological improvements and new products.  If I want to take my laptop, they will have media tents to do stories from, complete with wi-fi to blog directly to the net.  Pretty cool stuff. Always nice to run into professional colleagues as well.  I am looking forward to seeing Alan...