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Let’s pause for a moment and ponder the sheer, breathtaking magnitude of Hillary Clinton’s collapse. In Iowa, she once held a 56-point lead over Bernie Sanders in the polls. She finished in a dead heat, with the Iowa Democratic party, led by a woman whose car reportedly sports an “HRC2016” license plate, brazenly stonewalling an inquiry into numerous voting irregularities. In New Hampshire, her lead over Sanders also peaked at 56 points, and she lost by 22 — a stunning 78-point turnaround. It would be a partial consolation (very partial) if she lost to a young, charismatic firebrand, but she’s...

The results in New Hampshire show a Democratic Party in the state that is deeply ruptured demographically and ideologically -- in a way that happened to very much favor Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night. [Snip] Sanders won two out of every three men, and notably slightly more women than Clinton, according to the most recent exit polls. Sanders won young voters -- those under 30 -- by about 70 percentage points. He won those aged 45 to 64 with a slight majority. He won two-thirds of non-college graduates and a little over half of those with degrees. Sanders won six...

The central question for conservatives, on these and other issues, is whether Trump truly experienced radical conversions on issues they care about, or whether he has just learned to say the right things when he needs conservatives' votes. Even on his signature issue of immigration, Trump faulted Mitt Romney for being too tough as recently as 2012. In 2013, he told a group of immigration activists that he supported giving DREAMers a path to citizenship, and was shocked that they didn't have one already. Only now, running for president, has he sung a different tune.Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed...

I've seen a photo copy posted on FR threads that purports to prove that Donald Trump has been a Republican since 1980. "Smoking Gun" has reported that Trump has often changed parties citing the same source - New York City Board of Elections. I don't know if this New York City Board of Elections information sourced in this article has been added to the mix [showing party affiliation changes on forms signed by Donald Trump] so I'll add it here for discussion. ".......According to the New York City Board of Elections, Trump has changed his party affiliation five times since...

It's been 50 years since the War on Poverty was launched and after all that time and trillions of dollars spent about one of every seven people in the country is still living below the poverty line. Everyone on the right and the left seems to agree: in the war on poverty, poverty is clearly winning. So what should be done? You may have noticed that Paul Ryan and the Republican presidential candidates were guests of the Jack Kemp Center in North Carolina the other day, trotting out their ideas on how to combat poverty. But what about the Democrats?...

I applauded when Donald Trump jumped into the Republican presidential nominating fray. Here was someone with overwhelming national recognition due to his celebrity status, as well as someone who was politically independent due to his wealth. Someone of that stature could potentially drive a stake through the heart of the Republican establishment and forcefully blunt the folly of political correctness that has inundated American society. During the early stages of his campaign Trump exceeded all expectations in both of these arenas. However,as the novelty has begun to wear thin and his speeches and talking points have become annoyingly repetitive the...

A coupla links on the subject... observations to follow. http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/27/scientists-claim-high-co2-levels-are-making-people-dumber/ http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/09/climate-change-aliens-exoplanets The “problem” (IMHO) is it’s not making people dumb enough! Tons of Bee Ess ideology pretending to be “science” (Global Warming/Climate Change on cold days... or AGW/CC))… is dumped daily into our biosphere… far more damaging to the people of Earth than CO2. For liberty and prosperity (to be replaced with a rationed subsistence) must be surrendered to central hyper-nanny-bureaucrat authority to “save” the planet! ("dear leaders" exempt... of course) But in spite of a media full court press, not enough people are dumb enough (yet?) to buy the...

On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Matthew Dowd identified four factions that make up the Republican Party: the Tea Party, libertarians, social conservatives and establishment Republicans. Note that three of these groups are identified almost exclusively by how they think. Arguably the fourth is as well. The Republican Party definitely attracts people who take ideas seriously.What about the Democratic Party? It’s tempting to say that Democrats are liberal. But did you know that the base of the party – those that are the most reliable supporters of Democratic candidates – are not particularly liberal at all?According to Pew research,...

We’ve recently brought to your attention two instances of nebulous language: the comments of retired General Wesley Clark about putting extremists in internment camps, and the new order making parts of our immigration naturalization oath optional for certain “religious” groups. Words have meaning, and when they’re not specific, they’re left to interpretation. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has demonstrated such by redefining the taxing authority of the Congress, as well as what a State means when it comes to the Affordable Care Act. And now we have yet another example of dangerously nebulous language emanating from Capitol...

On Monday, President Obama spoke about his new strategy to take on the terrorist entity Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In doing so, he explained that the battle against that terrorist group — a group he had once termed "JV" — would amount to a "generational struggle." Why would defeating a ragtag army of primitives take generations? Because, Obama explained, "This is not simply a military effort. Ideologies are not defeated by guns. They're defeated with better ideas." To cap off this airsickness bag of gobbledygook, Obama then concluded, "We will never be at war with Islam." So let's...

I started the day on Bill Bennett's radio show, which is always fun. Jonah Goldberg was on before me, and advanced the proposition, after the Supreme Court's almighty constitutional bender last week, that it wasn't so bad; conservatives who just pottered around in their own world and tended to their families would still be able to lead lives largely unbattered by the forces of "progress". A few minutes later, one of Bill's listeners, Claudine, came on and said that's what Germans reckoned in the 1930s: just keep your head down and the storm will pass. How'd that work out? Claudine...

If Governor Nikki Haley thinks that removing a flag from a capitol building will do anything to alleviate the racial hatred fomented by Barack Obama over the past several years, and the Left throughout the country's history, she is sadly mistaken. Not only Governor Haley, but every conservative thinker who follows her lead have fallen into the web of deceit that the Left always uses to entrap the gullible. I recall over the years having seen white supremacists with American flags flying. Their position is that America is being taken away from them by foreigners and people who had no...

Scott Walker, in hot pursuit of the Republican nomination for president, knows no fear of sacred cows. He is attempting to reform the concept of permanent faculty appointments at Wisconsin’s publicly financed universities. The governor wants to repeat his earlier surprising victory in which a conservative chief executive in a very blue state took on the increasingly powerful and increasingly political teachers’ unions, and trimmed their empty sails. Mr. Walker’s successful campaign to put a rein on the teachers’ unions — to eliminate the obvious corruption of unions contributing to politicians’ campaigns and getting in return raises in salaries —...

This month, Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force News magazine, celebrates the daring role of Operation Jericho by its valiant air force personnel during WWII. Mosquito aircrafts were dispatched despite bad weather in order to breach walls of a Nazi prison allowing French resistance to escape. Compromised British Intelligence officers were amongst the prisoners urging accordingly. On their return home, several pilots were shot down by the Luftwaffe, while many of those escaping were killed. These are the histories of bravery clashing with ideologies the like of Hitler. Nowadays “liberation theologies” competing for recognition against historical record for political...

London (AFP) - British Prime Minister David Cameron was to announce new laws to combat "poisonous Islamist ideology" Wednesday in his first major policy announcement since winning last week's general election. His centre-right Conservative government is to include a new law to "defeat extremism" in its legislative programme which will be announced to parliament by Queen Elizabeth II on May 27. Britain's strategy on Islamist extremism has been in the spotlight for months since Islamic State (IS) executioner "Jihadi John" was identified as Mohammed Emwazi from London and a string of young people left Britain to fight for the IS...

Sen. Ted Cruz, who recently announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential ticket, thinks, like many conservatives, global warming isn’t happening. As he said on Seth Meyers’ talk show on March 16, “Satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there’s been zero warming, none whatsoever.” It’s no surprise that Cruz picked that figure: 17 years ago was 1998, an “El Nino” year, when global temperatures were artificially elevated after which they returned to their normal gradually increasing rate. When you look at all the data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (not just the cherry-picked data that...

Leftism [including all forms of collectivism] is a juvenile mentality in which the adherents want what they want and cannot be troubled with limitations and consequences. They think that their unworkable ideas will work if everyone believes in them. Given that it is essentially a belief system that is not amenable to logic, reason or evidence, it is necessarily dogmatic. Those who disagree are a threat; the mere existence of contrary thoughts cannot be tolerated and must be quashed at all costs. And, oddly enough, is a closely related cadre of religious dogmatists who, in their infantile mentality, blasphemously posits...

Wednesday, April 01, 2015 This Culture War We're In Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog How are wars won? To win a war you don't need to kill every soldier on the other side. What you need to do is destroy the other army as an organized force. You destroy the ability of the officers to command and the morale of the men. You destroy their perception of the worth of their side and of their own self-worth. All wars are culture wars. To win you must destroy the values of the other side. (That is one...

A friend sent me a link to a newspaper column celebrating the supposed ascendance of libertarianism among the hoi polloi. “It is clear,” the author wrote, “that there are certain areas where an increasing portion of Americans are adapting more libertarian views and simply want the government to leave them alone and allow them to freely live their lives.” He cited as examples same-sex marriage and drug legalization. “People have generally come to the conclusion,” he asserted, “that they don’t really care to whom one is attracted or what consenting adults do behind closed doors.” He also predicted that “the...

So I was watching Glee the other day (yes I watch Glee, okay?!), and man has that show jumped the shark. It’s frustrating, because Glee went down in flames the way a lot of good shows do: it got too busy constructing a leftist fantasyland to tell a decent story. It’s another victim of what I like to call “liberal backslide.”Bear with me here for a second. I realize Glee was never an elegant allegory of fiscal conservatism. And no one could claim that it ever had an ironclad grip on reality. The show takes place in an underfunded Ohio...