Today is the day of the last Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses. Donald Trump has again managed to draw all the attention to himself by announcing that he is skipping the event. There are mixed views on whether this will hurt or help him. Some observers are saying that he has finally made a move that will hurt him, that his absence will enable the other candidates to beat up on him without any pushback and that Iowa voters will feel insulted by his absence and switch their votes. But such predictions of Trump missteps have come and gone without being realized before.
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Glenn Greenwald writes that the US is preparing a new bombing campaign in Libya to deal with the mess it created by its first bombing campaign. It must be recalled that Hillary Clinton was one of the leading architects and advocates of that disastrous policy during her tenure as secretary of state and gloated about the brutal death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of a mob, even joking and chuckling about it, saying “We came, we saw, he died”.
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An anti-abortion group known as the Center for Medical Progress went undercover to secretly record and expose what they claimed were illegal practices by Planned Parenthood, and then released a highly edited video that was used by many people, most notably Carly Fiorina, to allege that they trafficked in baby parts for profit. Various government agencies, often at the instigation of Republican politicians at the state and federal level, investigated the allegations and found that PP had acted in conformity with the law.
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The members of the militia arrested by the FBI could face ten years or more in prison for their actions. It is not clear what will happen if and when they post bail and get out of jail. After all this tough talk about fighting government tyranny, will they meekly show up for trial or will they again defy the government to come and get them, this time from a more fortified position? Recall that Cliven Bundy still roams free on the family ranch. If Ammon and Ryan Bundy go back to their father’s ranch and refuse to attend their trial, what then?
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Late last night reports emerged that federal agents had been involved in a shootout with the militants that had taken over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge near the town of Burns, Oregon. Reports said that one person had been killed and that Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who had been seen as the leaders of the takeover, and four others had been arrested. The arrests happened on a highway, apparently as the militants were on their way to a community meeting in the town of John Day.
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Yesterday, there was a town hall event involving the three Democratic candidates for the party’s nomination. Because there was no free online access and I do not subscribe to cable news, I could not watch the event on CNN. The format consisted of something like a series of three successive press conferences with each candidate, with questions asked by members of the public that had been pre-selected by the moderator CNN’s Chris Cuomo but not given to the candidates in advance.
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Yesterday saw the event in Cleveland, as part of a nationwide program Breaking Our Silence, where people from the community read the stories of women who have had abortions in order to dispel the stigma surrounding that act. There were sixteen stories told and within that relatively small group the organizers had managed quite a feat of diversity. There were women and men, blacks, whites, and Asians, young, middle-aged, and old.
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Sarah Palin is a media magnet like Donald trump. However much you know that they crave attention, that it is the very oxygen of their existence and they would wither away if they were ignored, it seems almost impossible to avoid reading about them and talking about them. I am as guilty as the next political observer of this behavior. I am not sure why that is but I suspect it is for the same reason that people are fascinated by sociopaths in general. Most of us cannot imagine behaving in such ways and try to understand what could be driving such peculiar behavior.
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Billionaire and former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg has said that he is considering entering the presidential race as an independent candidate and said that he is willing to spend up to a billion dollars of his own money in the endeavor. He says he will make his final decision sometime in March.
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It is clear that Donald Trump is having a blast right now. For someone with a massive ego who loves to be in the limelight, has a gut instinct for what a sizable fraction of the country finds appealing, and does not mind whom he offends, running for president without having to beg people for money is an ideal occupation, especially since he can say whatever he wants and the media will cover him.
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