The Justice Department charged four Chinese intelligence officers on Monday with a 2017 hack of credit-reporting giant Equifax, which compromised the personal data of nearly 150 million Americans.
“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Attorney General William Barr said in a press conference on the announcement.
Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei, members of the People’s Liberation Army’s 54th Research Institute, are charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as well as two counts of unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer, one count of economic espionage, and three counts of wire fraud.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Atlanta last week, alleges that the soldiers used a vulnerability in Equifax’s online dispute portal to access its secure servers over several weeks. The group ran approximately 9,000 queries while routing traffic through 34 servers to secretly obtain names, birth dates, and social security numbers for nearly half of all American citizens, before compressing and exporting the data.
“There were 11 bodies pulled from the wreckage,” said one official privy to the panicked conversations that swirled through the corridors of power that morning. “We are talking about the entire inner sanctum of the Quds Force. This wasn’t just Hajj Qassem [Suleimani] and Abu Mahdi [al-Muhandis]. This was everyone who mattered to them in Iraq and beyond.”
Another source, a western intelligence agency, was more circumspect, suggesting that those killed may have been less decisive in the Iranian nexus than the Iraqis believed. “However, the [assassinations] may have significant repercussions for the relationship between the [Quds Force] and Iran-aligned groups in Iraq in the near term,” an official said.
In the 40-day mourning period to mark the Iranian general’s death, which ended last Thursday, the fallout in Iraq has barely subsided. If anything, its impact has become more acute there, as well as in Suleimani’s homeland of Iran, and elsewhere in a region he had come to dominate like no other figure.
From the bunkers of south Beirut to the battlefields of northern Syria and the combustible streets of Iraq, the loss of Suleimani and his entourage has derailed much of Iran’s momentum in the region and exposed to rare vulnerability the opaque Quds Force it has used to project its influence over two decades.
The assassination has also shone a light on the complicated relationship between the Iranian leadership and the Iraqi government, senior members of which have scrambled ever since to resurrect Suleimani’s core regional projects located as far away as the Lebanese capital and Damascus. The reckoning started as soon as the dead were buried.
Plus attempts by Iran to get Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to help fill the void.
In interviews, three caucus volunteers described serious concerns about rushed preparations for the Feb. 22 election, including insufficient training for a newly-adopted electronic vote-tally system and confusing instructions on how to administer the caucuses. There are also unanswered questions about the security of Internet connections at some 2,000 precinct sites that will transmit results to a central “war room” set up by the Nevada Democratic Party.
In a major speech about the future of Europe, delivered in Bruges on September 20th, 1988, she “began with a grand historical sweep, taking in the Romans, Magna Carta, the Glorious revolution and much more, all designed to show that Britain was part of European civilization.” Thatcher also made it clear that “Britain wanted no ‘cosy, isolated existence’ on the fringes: ‘Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.’”
What Thatcher did oppose was the project of “ever-closer union,” and the resulting weakening of the influence of nation states. She believed that Europe should not be a centralizing power that incubated supranational institutions—particularly as this model of centralization was just then in the throes of spectacular failure within the Soviet Union. Instead, as she outlined in a speech at The Hague on May 15th, 1992, she favored a looser form of European co-operation, by which states retained their sovereign freedoms—including control of their borders. This, she believed, would accommodate the political and cultural diversity of Europe, including the eastern European countries that, she hoped, would be offered full EC membership. As Moore notes, in fact, she was one of the few prominent European politicians of the 1980s who had recognized that cities such as Warsaw, Prague and Budapest were very much European cities that had been cut off from their historical and cultural roots.
In her speech at The Hague, as Moore summarizes it, “she prophesied that large-scale immigration caused by free movement would cause ‘ethnic conflict,’ and bring about the rise of extremist parties, that there would be ‘national resentment’ because of one-size-fits-all financial and economic policies under a single currency, and that a more centralized EC would not be able to work with the influx of new member states from the former Eastern Bloc.”
ICE said in a statement that California’s law doesn’t supersede federal law and “will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.”
“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” David Jennings, ICE’s field office director in San Francisco, said in the statement.
Clayton Williams, RIP. He was that close to beating Ann Richards for Texas governor in 1990 before he shot his mouth off, not realizing that you can never trusts journalists to keep something that hurts a Republican quiet. Had he won, it’s extremely doubtful that George W. Bush gets elected governor in 1994, and the modern history of America turns out very differently…
“The 25-year-old man accused of fatally stabbing a library security officer to death had been released without bail after being accused of trying to rape a woman at Montefiore Nyack Hospital in November.” Thanks to Democratic “reforms,” attempting to rape a woman in a hospital in New York is now effectively a misdemeanor.
“Ilhan Omar DID marry her brother, reveals Somali community leader, who says both she and her husband told him Ahmed Elmi was her sibling and she would do what she had to do to get him ‘papers’ to keep him in US.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Speaking of pointing and laughing: How #NeverTrumpers are the waterboys of the D.C. elite. “All of their predictions are based on the conventional wisdom and assumptions of an insulted and excluded D.C. intelligentsia, and all are wrong.”
This was Rusty. For 10 years he comforted patients and staff at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. Yesterday, one day after his eighteenth birthday, Rusty passed away. Flowers and a pair of his trademark glasses were left on his favorite chair. He is our fifteenth 15/10 ❤️ pic.twitter.com/LylNq0tCSu
I heard a little more barking than normal from the puppy corral, so I went to check it out. It was Rocky, letting me know that his brother Ryman… might need a little help. pic.twitter.com/iu605vulW7
The reviews are in for President Donald Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address. Observers seem to think he put on a home run clinic:
Trump’s speech tonight was simply spectacular, and the Democrats in the room knew it. From the unapologetic embrace of America and everything it stands for to the emotional moments with Kayla Mueller’s family and the returning soldier surprising his, it was nearly perfect.
I’m not aware of a president, since the time of Ronald Reagan, that has stood at the podium during the #SOTU and proudly kicked socialism in the teeth. I’m more than impressed.
There were many touching moments. Like the runiting of a military family following the husband’s fourth overseas deployment:
A powerful family reunion during last night’s #SOTU Address. A poignant reminder of the sacrifices American military families bear during times of war. May our bravest in uniform always be safe and protected by God almighty. https://t.co/hK0MiaYlha
One especially powerful moment: President Trump bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, who recently announced that he has advanced lung cancer:
"Trump making Democrats sit in silence while he rewards Medal of Freedom to a crying guy with cancer. The man has powerful political instincts." — message from a fellow journalist.
President Trump’s recognition of a Tuskegee Airman? Not standing.
A small cluster of Democrats including Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Mark Pocan don't stand for Charles McGee, the former Tuskegee Airman introduced by Trump
The speech that Pelosi ripped up wasn't just any copy of the speech. It was the signed copy the President officially delivers to the Speaker before a SOTU.
It was the ultimate classless move by a classless liar.
The political equivalent of throwing one’s toys out of one’s pram (*stroller)… every time I think Democrats can’t possibly play into Trump’s hands any more, they do something like this to give him another huge boost. Madness. https://t.co/1xZ8Tu6fcI
Democrats have lived so long in the poisonous #resistance reality bubble that they have no idea how badly their petty stunts play in the rest of the country.
I suspect they’re going to find out in November, good and hard.
An elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander has been shot dead by masked assailants in front of his house in southwestern Iran. Crucially, he was a mid-range to possibly top commander of the IRGC’s hardline domestic wing, the Basij militia, and a close ally of recently assassinated Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, reports state news IRNA on Wednesday.
The Basij are those swell fellows who punish Iranians for “un-Islamic” activity like women not wearing a hijab. They’re usually on the front lines of punishing protesters and defending the regime. And as members of the Revolutionary Guards, they are included under the State Department’s designation as a terrorist organization.
The details clearly suggest that it was an assassination — at this point by an unknown entity or group — given two men riding a motorcycle drove by and essentially executed him in the street.
Reuters has described the slain Basij militia commander, Abdolhossein Mojaddami, as “an ally of Qassem Soleimani” — who was himself assassinated by US drone strike on January 3rd.
Did we whack him? Quite possibly. But it’s not like the Basij don’t have other enemies. Could be domestic opposition. Could be Iranian Army regulars. Could be a rival Islamic Republic faction. Could be Mossad. Could be the Saudis.
But also note that he isn’t the only Iranian terror functionary killed since Qassem Suleimani got dirtnapped. On January 11, word came down that Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Taleb Abbas Ali al-Saedi had also been killed.
Local media is reporting that Al-Saedi was “assassinated” by an unknown group of gunmen late Saturday night in the Iraqi city of Karbala, some 62 miles southwest of Baghdad, the Daily Mail said. Al-Saedi commanded the Karbala Brigades, an Iranian militia unit that is part of the larger Shiite PMF umbrella.
If we whacked one or both of them, it’s a sign that the Trump Administration is willing to wage war against Iranian terror agents the same way the Islamic Republic of Iran wages war against its enemies: quietly, behind the scenes, consistently striking at our enemies without bragging or press releases.
And we’ve already put Suleimani’s successor Esmail Ghaani on notice:
“If (Esmail) Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,” U.S. envoy Brian Hook told the Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat.
He said in the interview in Davos that Trump had long made it clear “that any attack on Americans or American interests would be met with a decisive response.”
“This isn’t a new threat. The president has always said that he will always respond decisively to protect American interests,” Hook said. “I think the Iranian regime understands now that they cannot attack America and get away with it.”
After his appointment, Ghaani said he would “continue in this luminous path” taken by Soleimani and said the goal was to drive U.S. forces out of the region, Iran’s long stated policy.
Asked about the possibility of regime collapse, General James Jones, who was Obama’s national security advisor in 2009 and 2010, said the risk for Tehran cannot be ignored.
“I think the needle is moved more in that direction in the last year towards that possibility than ever before with a combination of the sanctions, relative isolation of the regime, and then some catastrophic decisions have been made — assuming that we weren’t going to respond, which turned out to be a very, very bad decision,” Jones told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
The response Jones referred to was the U.S. drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3, a move that shocked the region and prompted a response from Iran in the form of missiles strikes on two military bases in Iraq that housed U.S. forces. No one was killed in the strikes. Washington says the strike was in response to the storming by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and purported threats cited by the White House of impending attacks on Americans.
“I think it’s clear that the regime in Iran has had a very bad couple of weeks,” Jones said. “And one of the things that people don’t talk about too much is the degree of unrest that there is in the country, which I think is significant.”
“So you take the removal of Soleimani, you take the accidental downing of the civilian aircraft coupled with the amount of popular unrest — the needle towards possible collapse of a regime has to be something that people think about. It’s probably not politically correct to talk about it, but you have to think about it.”
Germany, France and the United Kingdom have launched a formal dispute mechanism against Iran which could end up putting international sanctions on the regime. The measure was announced on Tuesday following recent Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear deal. The dispute will now be brought before a Joint Commission made up of Iran, Russia, China, the three European signatories, and the European Union. If the panel fails to resolve the dispute, the matter will then come before the United Nations Security Council.
Even if the process gets stalled at the UN, Iran could end up facing comprehensive international sanctions — in addition to the current U.S. sanctions, media reports suggest. “If the Security Council does not vote within 30 days to continue sanctions relief, sanctions in place under previous UN resolutions would be reimposed – known as a “snapback”,” British newspaper The Telegraph reported.
Tehran formally abandon the nuclear deal last Sunday by announcing its plans to scrap the limits on enriching uranium put in place by the international agreement, Iranian state TV confirmed. The move brings Tehran within striking distance of procuring sufficient weapons-grade uranium needed for a nuclear arsenal. The regime already possesses advanced missile delivery systems capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Florida Republican representative (and veteran) Brian Mast at congressional hearing on Soleimani “If you walk out this hallway, and you take a right and a right and another right, you’re going to come to several beautiful walls that have the names of our fallen service members from the War on Terror,” Mast began. “And I would ask, can any of you provide me with one name on that wall that doesn’t justify killing Soleimani?” Dead silence ensues. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
More swamp follies: “Federal Judge Orders Justice Department to Explain Why Awan Documents Are Being Kept Secret.”
An apparently frustrated federal judge ordered attorneys for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to appear Jan. 15 for a “snap” hearing to explain why the government isn’t producing documents sought by Judicial Watch concerning former Democratic information technology aide Imran Awan.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta’s unusual order followed a sealed submission by DOJ attorneys Jan. 10 in the case prompted by the nonprofit government watchdog’s November 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
Such hastily convened hearings are extremely unusual in a federal judicial system so jammed that months can pass before cases are litigated in courtrooms.
“In a hearing last month, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta expressed frustration and ordered the Justice Department to explain its failure to produce records by January 10 and to provide Judicial Watch some details about the delay,” Judicial Watch said in a statement Jan. 14 about the snap hearing.
“Instead, the Justice Department made its filing under seal and has yet to provide Judicial Watch with any details about its failure to produce records as promised to the court,” Judicial Watch said.
Federal attorneys previously said in December 2019 that they were unable to provide the documents sought in the Judicial Watch FOIA requests because they include materials from a “related sealed criminal matter.”
I think we all know the real reason the DOJ won’t produce the documents: Because they’ll prove deeply damaging to Democrats. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Arizona Republican Senator Martha McSally calls CNN reporter Manu Raju a liberal hack. Good for her. (And yes, coverage of CNN’s putting it’s thumb on the scale for Elizabeth Warren and against Bernie Sanders is coming in next week’s Clown Car update.)
More about our crappy media: “So many of the people in foreign affairs journalism imbibed the “Bush lied us into war” rhetoric so deeply that they’ve concluded that American officials must be treated with way more skepticism than officials in secretive and serially dishonest authoritarian regimes. They say generals are always fighting the last war; apparently journalists are always covering the last one, too.”
In every treatment room in the @ChildrensPgh ER, there is a sign that says they are duty and legally bound to provide necessary life-saving or stabilizing care regardless of a patient's ability to pay. This is true *everywhere*. (22/25)
Oh come on! I’ve got nothing for or against Odell Beckham, Jr. (he’s a talented wide receiver; bit of a chucklehead, but far from the worst among wide receivers (*coughcoughAntonioBrown*)), and people committing actual assault against police officers should be arrested. This isn’t remotely it.
Williamson drops Out, Steyer eclipses Warren in two early states, the billionaire boys keep shoveling wheelbarrows full of cash into the fire, and Biden can’t tell the difference between Iran and Iraq. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!
Either my Google-fu is weak or no campaigns have released Q4 fundraising totals this week. Or maybe the press just doesn’t care enough to report on any that have. I’m leaving this up because I suspect official numbers for the rest will start posting after the FEC January 15th deadline.
Fox News (Nevada): Biden 23, Sanders 17, Steyer 12, Warren 12, Buttigieg 6, Yang 4, Booker 3, Bloomberg 2, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, Williamson 1. Steyer’s saturation money bombing campaign may finally be bearing fruit.
Fox News (South Carolina): Biden 36, Steyer 15, Sanders 14, Warren 10, Buttigieg 4, Bloomberg 2, Booker 2, Yang 2, Gabbard 1. Ditto.
Fox News (Wisconsin): Biden 23, Sanders 21, Warren 13, Buttigieg 9, Bloomberg 7, Klobuchar 4, Booker 3, Yang 3, Gabbard 2, Steyer 2, Williamson 1. If Klobuchar’s “I’m the most Midwest of the Midwest” strategy won’t work in Wisconsin, where will it work?
Democrats are now beginning to confront a very real scenario where the nomination — and the winnowing — will not be decided in states where campaigns have been plowing ground for more than a year, but in places and calendar dates so deep into primary season that until recently they’ve received almost no attention at all.
The Iowa field is bunched together with little daylight between a handful of well-funded candidates. Each of the four early voting states continues to present the prospect of a different winner. And, at the end of that gauntlet on Super Tuesday, a free-spending billionaire — Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor — is waiting to challenge whichever candidate or candidates emerge.
Snip.
Coloring the thinking of many Democrats is Bloomberg’s apparent willingness to spend limitless sums, leaving him poised to overwhelm their early operations across the Super Tuesday map.
For most candidates, said Scott Kozar, a Democratic ad-maker who is helping Sen. Michael Bennet with his campaign, “No one is playing in those states.”
He predicted the candidates still standing after Super Tuesday will be forced to run a “fast play” as they scramble into March.
In addition to flooding the airwaves with television ads, Bloomberg has already put more than 200 staffers on the ground in states that vote in March and April. He traveled recently to Ohio and Michigan, where he has hired senior state-level staff and plans to open 9 offices and 12 offices, respectively.
His campaign told POLITICO he plans to open five offices in Missouri, 17 in Florida and 12 in Illinois.
“Before Bloomberg got in, I said whoever wins South Carolina on February 29 will be the nominee because of the momentum factor” coming out of the first four primary states, said Bob Mulholland, a Democratic National Committee member from California. “Bloomberg kind of puts a pause on that.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with one of the field’s most robust ground operations, has had post-Super Tuesday staffers flung out across the country for months, with a presence in Missouri , Michigan, Washington, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Arizona and Pennsylvania, according to an aide. And Sen. Bernie Sanders has an army of volunteers held over from his 2016 campaign.
But for every other Democrat, the landscape following Super Tuesday’s gigantic delegate hauls on March 3 is relatively barren — and will likely remain so until after the initial primaries.
Total TV ad spend by 2020 candidates, through this week:
Bloomberg: $153.1 million Steyer: $116.5 million Sanders: $11.7 million Buttigieg: $11.4 million Yang: $7.3 million Warren: $3.7 million Biden: $3 million Klobuchar: $2.9 million Bennet: $1.1 million Gabbard: $1.1 million
How the New Hampshire primary traditionally works: the out-of-town press invades, occupying the Manchester Radisson like a siege army, and leans into a presumed frontrunner until he or she wins.
If the voters are very rebellious, and decide to back a different conventional politician, the press re-calibrates behind the new hotness. If voters decide to think completely for themselves, and pick a candidate not approved by the party or major media – no one knows what happens then, since we’ve never seen it, at least not on the Democratic side.
Two candidates I didn’t catch on a recent tour through the state each show how conventional campaign thinking has been upended in this cycle.
In the days after the New Year, Biden announced he’d be willing to pick a Republican running mate and also said coal miners should “learn to program.” He will go on to say “no one understood Obamacare” in Iowa. Reporters almost universally think he’d be a shit candidate against Trump, but voters haven’t agreed: he’s still at or near the top of polls.
Bernie Sanders meanwhile has spent the last four years serving as the subject of stories detailing his lack of general election viability, declining popularity, Putin-ness, physical unfitness, bad hair, and ideological unsuitability, among other things.
Yet he entered 2020 crushing the field in fundraising, raising $34.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, and is now a co-frontrunner with Biden in some polls. The failure of years of blunt messaging to derail a candidate like Sanders is part of what’s been driving those stories about “anxiety” among the party elders.
One candidate who has been affected by media, especially of late, is Elizabeth Warren. In Concord, I watched the news cycle take a bite out of her campaign.
New Englanders (I’m one) think they invented everything from baseball to microbreweries to the Democratic Party, and they believe the rest of the country should pay an annual thank-you dividend for the Kennedys. In regional memory, Mike Dukakis won the presidency in a landslide.
That’s why a sizable crowd in Concord responds with howls of approval when Elizabeth Warren asks, “Can we just admit that trickle-down economics is a failure?” In Phoenix, they’d ask, “What the fuck is trickle-down economics?” In parts of New England, Reagan is still president and they’re still mad about ketchup being declared a vegetable. Understanding the vagaries of Masshole chauvinism helps here.
As of this moment, if I had to place a wager I believe Bernie Sanders is going to be the Democratic nominee. But I wouldn’t necessarily bet much—the race is just too volatile.
There are a batch of polls out showing the Three Bs—Bernie, Biden, and Buttigieg—virtually tied in Iowa and New Hampshire. Keep in mind two implications of this: first, a large portion of the Democratic primary electorate—maybe half or more—is undecided, and second, between undecided Democrats and the share of votes going to the rest of the field, Biden is an extremely weak front-runner. A few more senior moments in his campaign and the race might cascade rapidly to Bernie, who has the most money to go the distance, or Buttigieg, who has the kind of fresh face Democrats often fall for—maybe too fresh a face.
The deciding factor is going to be personality, and Trump has the advantage because he has one. The question is going to be, “Who does America trust not to screw up all the repairs that Trump has made to America post-Barack Obama?”
The answer is going to be, “Not one of those quasi-commie Democrat dorks.”
There are six real candidates – sorry Yangbangers and Tulsi-touters, but those two are not in the mix.
There’s Biden. What a putz. From his bizarre behavior to his brazen demand that we just accept the manifest corruption of his boy Lil’ Crackpipe, Gropey Joe is not merely of the Swamp. He is the Swamp. And there’s no reason to believe Trump won’t drain him.
Right now, he’s the leader in the polls and he’s the most likely to be nominated. There are two reasons. The first is that he has legacy black Democrat support. He’s the closest to a traditional Democrat, as opposed to one of the faculty lounge snobs that makes up most of the rest of the race. The second is that he has been designated The Democrat Most Likely To Succeed in beating The Donald. It’s unclear why. Sure, some polls say it (though they are shifting in Trump’s direction), but the problem for Joe is that so many liberal media types are wishcasting his victory that they never hit him hard. He’s soft and open to attack. Not-Mrs. Willie Brown gently tapped him in a debate (on busing, which is very, very popular among rich Democrats whose kids would never, ever be bused in a zillion years) and Not-Senile Joe went into a tailspin. He’s vulnerable because he’s been coddled – Trump will bash Hoover Biden’s dad all over the stage, as Trump feels no obligation not to talk about the subjects that the media has deemed off-limits, like the ex-senator’s (D-Credit Card Companies) Snortunate Son.
And he’ll pick Amy Klobuchar as his running mate. She’s another one who the Democrats imagine can reach out and touch the working-class folks who went for Trump. Of course, she’ll reach out and touch them with a rock – she’s got a temper and she’ll get pilloried as a tyrant. Tyrannical women are a hard sell – just ask Stumbles McMyturn. Sure, the media has announced that she is “having her moment,” but moments stop. She’s neither interesting nor inspirational, and the very moderation she allegedly represents (she doesn’t – she’s on-board with every pinko policy her pals subscribe to) will keep her from breaking out as a candidate and depress the turn-out among the Dem left (but I repeat myself) when she’s on the ticket with Biden.
Snip.
Then there’s Chief Spewing Bull. Her own brother recently dissed her for inventing more fake family history. Trump would chew her up, spit her out, and wash the residue into the gutter. Where’s the enthusiasm for a serial fraud who compares poorly to every bitter spinster public elementary school teacher who either demanded you use your inside voice or tried to make her class celebrate Kwanza? Maybe at Harvard or The New York Times offices, and nowhere else. She sadly won’t get nominated, because she’s such a disaster Trump might get 45 states, and Biden won’t pick her as veep because he knows she’s going to be scheming and drape-measuring every time she visits the Oval Office, and the budget does not include a presidential food taster.
Maybe Bernie Sanders will get it – which would be great because then all the nimrods who pushed the phony dossier would have to concede that they were going to vote for the one candidate we absolutely know has had sex in Russia – shiver. Yeah, he had his honeymoon in the old Soviet Union, and to people who aren’t college professors or college students or aspiring college students, that’s a disqualifier. He’s a loser, and what will be great is how the Dem bigwigs try to explain to the harder left contingent why their crusty curmudgeon is getting dissed again in the primaries.
Pete Buttigieg…why? Why is he even part of this? He’s a sub-par mayor of a sub-par town in a state most Democrats have never even heard of. Really, if he’s the one the Dems are looking to for salvation – oh yeah, he says he’s a Christian too, incessantly – then they’re pretty hosed already. His candidacy will soon Pete-r out.
Though maybe Biden will pick him for VP – if so, I’ve got $10 that says Smart Joe will get caught on tape at a rally explaining to disappointed feminists that, “Well, a gay guy counts as a woman, right?” You know that will totally happen.
And tiny Michael Bloomberg’s zillion-dollar ad budget has captured him…fifth or sixth place. Fascist Frodo’s not going anywhere. He’s already lost.
Hmmm:
Tweets by Democrat presidential candidates supporting Iranian protesters today:
Joe Biden is the most likely person to win a majority of pledged Democratic delegates, according to the FiveThirtyEight primary model, which we launched on Thursday morning. This is our first-ever full-fledged model of the primaries and we’re pretty excited about it — to read more about how the model works, see here.
But saying the former vice president is the front-runner doesn’t really tell the whole story. He may be the most likely nominee, but he’s still a slight underdog relative to the field, with a 40 percent chance of winning a majority of pledged delegates1 by the time of the last scheduled Democratic contest — the Virgin Islands caucus on June 6. If one lowers the threshold to a plurality of delegates, rather than a majority, then Biden’s chances are almost 50-50, but not quite — he has a 45 percent chance of a delegate plurality, per our forecast.
Second place is a set of steak knives Sanders, and third place is “No one,” so evidently “brokered convention” has a better chance than Warren or Buttigieg. Read the piece for more 538 model wonkery. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Elected Democrats in Texas and California previously backing Castro and Harris have flocked to Biden, but when Leticia Van de Putte is the highest profile name, you’ve got nothing that’s going to move the needle. I don’t see the anti-war Democrats being wild at this statement:
BREAKING: Video emerges of @JoeBiden criticizing antiwar Dems, praising Bush for leading America into the Iraq War & promising he will support Bush's continuation of the war
"The president of the United States is a bold leader & he is popular…I & many others will support him" pic.twitter.com/Sx2zsdbSJV
At a campaign stop here, the former New York mayor said he has no intention of trying to qualify for upcoming debates — even though he almost certainly could participate if he wanted to. It was his most definitive statement to date on a stance that has rankled his opponents, who chafe at his limitless war chest and feel he should have to endure the rigors of campaigning they do.
Bloomberg insisted he’d like to debate if the rules allowed. But the billionaire, a latecomer to the Democratic primary, reasoned it is inappropriate for someone of his wealth to ask supporters for cash.
“It’s up to the Democratic Party. They have a rule that you cannot participate in the debates unless you have a few hundred thousand donors,” he told POLITICO after the campaign event Tuesday. “I don’t take any money from anybody else. I fund my campaign myself.”
Bloomberg is running aggressively to win the Democratic nomination but he is simultaneously building out a general election machine to defeat President Trump, with a new structure — data, field organizing, advertising and policy — that aims to elect Democrats up and down the ballot even if the party’s voters reject the former New York mayor this spring.
The party he is moving to transform, which he only rejoined in October, has become little more than a bystander to his ambition. With more than 800 employees, $200 million in ad spending so far and a fully catered Times Square office that houses hundreds of employees, “Mike Bloomberg 2020, Inc.” does not resemble a primary campaign in any traditional sense. It is an experiment in what happens to democracy when a single faction operates without economic constraints.
AD
While most presidential efforts start early and poor, the Bloomberg project exists in an inverted dimension, a fact that has caught the attention of Trump, who spent years tracking Bloomberg’s political career closely in New York. The president has been closely monitoring Bloomberg’s campaign, impressed by his extraordinary spending and fearful of his potential rise, according to Trump confidants with whom the president has discussed Bloomberg.
Remember, this is the Washington Post, so anytime they “quote” anonymous “sources” like “Trump confidants,” our working assumption should always be that they’re “lying.”
Bloomberg’s aides, in turn, have delighted in trying to find ways to get Trump’s attention and increase his anxiety, like the recent purchase of an $11 million Super Bowl ad that will run against a similar spot purchased by Trump’s campaign.
The extravagance is part of the message, an attempt to demonstrate his competence and show that he can manage something big with good intentions.
“We also want people to know that we are building a juggernaut pointed at Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” said Tim O’Brien, a senior adviser to the campaign who has been taking the message to state parties around the country. “One of Mike’s goals is to make a machine that lasts. This idea that he wants to do a vanity run or is just buying exposure is belied by that.”
To begin with, that means building a fully staffed general election campaign in January to win primary contests in March, with a suite of high-profile recruits on the payroll, like former top executives for Facebook, Foursquare and GroupM, the world’s largest advertising media company by billings. No one at headquarters knows what he will ultimately choose to spend, but they operate for the moment without budgets, putting the 12th richest person on the planet on a path to spend $1 billion or more.
He wants Democrats to know he is happy to spread the money around. During a swing through Texas on Saturday, when his campaign staged over 150 events in 27 states in a show of organizing prowess, he cast himself as a potential benefactor and mentor for all state and local party organizations.
“I think you look at each,” Bloomberg said, when asked if he would boost them. “You look to see how well they’re run, and if you tried to help, that you’d be able to help. That’s number one. And number two would be that your money would be used efficiently. And it’s not just money. We can bring some advice.”
Whether he wins or loses the nomination, the ubiquitous television and digital ads he is running have been crafted as the opening exchange in a conversation about Trump’s failures that will continue through November.
Also this line: “His policy, though sometimes nuanced on paper, is uncomplicated in presentation, leaning heavily on phrases known to move focus groups.” Left unasked how rank-and-file Democrats feel about their party being taken over by a billionaire. Bloomy is all in on importing cheaper foreign labor.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? “Tulsi Gabbard: ‘Everybody knows and understands’ that Hillary Clinton is a ‘warmonger.'” I’m not necessarily disagreeing, but I wonder what Tulsi’s endgame is in this spat, other than reincarnation.
Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Delaney Looks To Build Momentum As Iowa Caucuses Draw Closer.” That would suggest he had any in the first place.
Iowa political experts say her day job representing a neighboring state, her Midwestern values and the work she has put into meeting voters in big cities and small towns in every corner of the state could result in a surprise payoff when Iowans caucus on Feb. 3.
A win for Klobuchar here doesn’t mean coming in first in Iowa, said Dianne Bystrom, director emerita of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. It means beating expectations.
“I think Klobuchar has a chance. People really like Amy Klobuchar,” said Bystrom, who is neutral in the race.
“She is down home, and she’s funny, and she’s got this quirky charm about her,” Bystrom said.
Klobuchar is not a soaring orator; she is plainspoken and earnest. Sporting a no-muss, no-fuss bob, she offers anecdotes about parenthood and being a woman in the workplace — complete with references to hiding her gray roots — that appeal to the suburban moms who can be key to elections.
All this amounts to “We need to pump her up for the sake of drama, but, yeah, she’s toast.”
Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. SuperPac makes $2 million ad buy for Patrick in early states. Given Bloomberg and Steyer’s saturation money bombing and Patrick’s 0.0 standing in all polls, that’s probably a less effective campaign tactic than throwing a giant kegger in New Hampshire and inviting every state resident to attend. “Since his late entry to the race in November, Patrick has struggled to gain traction with early-state Democratic voters or a national audience.” Like a greased man on a Teflon floor wearing sticks of butter as shoes. He’s concentrating on New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Increasingly alarmed that Bernie Sanders could become their party’s presidential nominee, establishment-minded Democrats are warning primary voters that the self-described democratic socialist would struggle to defeat President Donald Trump and hurt the party’s chances in premier House, Senate and governors’ races.
The urgent warnings come as Sanders shows new signs of strength on the ground in the first two states on the presidential primary calendar, Iowa and New Hampshire, backed by a dominant fundraising operation. The Vermont senator has largely escaped close scrutiny over the last year as his rivals doubted the quirky 78-year-old’s ability to win the nomination. But less than a month before Iowa’s kickoff caucuses, the doubters are being forced to take Sanders seriously.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, previously a senior aide to President Barack Obama, warned Democrats that Sanders’ status as a democratic socialist and his unwavering support for “Medicare for All” won’t play well among swing voters in the states that matter most in 2020.
“You need a candidate with a message that can help us win swing voters in battleground states,” Emanuel said in an interview. “The degree of difficulty dramatically increases under a Bernie Sanders candidacy. It just gets a lot harder.”
The increasingly vocal concerns are coming from a number of political veterans tied to the Obama administration and the 2020 field’s moderate wing, including those backing former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.
(Hat tip: Powerline.) “Of course Bernie can win,” says man waving away idea that a socialist is too far left for the American electorate. I find his arguments (such as they are) unconvincing. Sanders says that the Qassem Suleimani strike is just like Putin assassinating political rivals.
Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. He qualified for the January debate by polling at 12% in in Nevada and 15% in South Carolina. I never imagined there would ever be a Steyer boomlet, yet here we are. The hilarious thing about this is that it’s going to inspire Bloomberg to dump a ton more money into the race.
Along with Reps. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), Sanders and Warren are scheduled to speak Wednesday evening with members of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). The group played a central role in what former Obama national security adviser Ben Rhodes called the administration’s pro-Iran Deal “echo chamber,” spinning journalists, lawmakers, and citizens.
The Democratic candidates’ willingness to engage with NIAC—a group that aggressively pushed the accord and has strongly advocated against U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic—reflects their desire to see America reenter the nuclear deal, which released up to $150 billion in cash to the regime. Much of that money has gone to fund Iran’s regional terror operations, including recent attacks on American personnel stationed in the region.
NIAC has deep ties to Iran’s regime, including senior officials like Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Zarif worked closely with NIAC founder Trita Parsi, who, in turn, consulted with the Obama administration.
Parsi lobbied Congress against sanctions on Iran in 2013 and met with Obama administration officials at the White House dozens of times leading up to the nuclear deal’s signing in 2015. Multiple U.S. officials and senior congressional sources informed the Washington Free Beacon that Parsi helped the White House craft its messaging as it tried to sell the nuclear deal to the public. The NIAC chief met with Rhodes, among other top officials, during multiple visits throughout the Obama era.
That’s just part of the Warren weirdness on Iran, where in 24 hours she went from calling Suleimani a “murderer” to just “a government official, a high-ranking military official.” (There’s no end to appeasing the soft-on-Jihad loony left). Castro endorses her. Let’s check the reaction meter:
I stayed in the race to take advantage of every possible effort to share our message. With caucuses and primaries now about to begin, however, we will not be able to garner enough votes in the election to elevate our conversation any more than it is now. The primaries might be tightly contested among the top contenders, and I don’t want to get in the way of a progressive candidate winning any of them.
As of today, therefore, I’m suspending my campaign.
Farewell, Marianne. We’ll always have the memes…
New trending GIF on GIPHY dnc debates 2019, marianne williamson, dark psychic force, democratic primary debates! pic.twitter.com/gEPdDmPACI
No candidate has leaned more into the fun part of running for president than Yang. He does some high fives, then reminds all: He’s the guy who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month. He notes the state of Alaska already does something like this, divvying up oil revenues. What’s the 21st century version of oil?
Murmurs among the teenagers. Yang grins.
“It’s technology,” he says. “Although, I thought someone was going to say marijuana. And that’s cool, because I want to legalize weed, too.”
LOUD cheers. The Beavis and Butthead factor here is through the roof. Also: Yang wants to give 16-year-olds with cash and expanded relaxation options the right to vote. (Studies show this increases like likelihood of future engagement). You could cause brain bubbles in a Fox News host with a video of this Democrat recruitment scene.
Through the eyes of a rival candidate, Yang’s slang-laden pitch to high schoolers might smack of Steve Buscemi’s “How do you do, fellow kids?” routine. His speech is peppered with phrases like “That’s okay, bro.” Describing the political “disaster” previous generations have left children, he says, “You could even call it a shit show.”
But kids spot phonies quickly, and Yang isn’t failing. His campaign is meant as a warning that it’s traditional politicians who are being phony, when they don’t raise alarms about a jobs crisis brought on by automation and changes to the manufacturing economy.
He’s been evangelizing the Democratic Party to a new generation of voters, at events like these and online, where his #YangGang has been one of campaign 2020’s big marketing success stories. He raised $16.5 million in the fourth quarter, fifth among Democrats, hinting at new sources of support for the party.
But the reaction to Yang among party leaders and press has hovered between indifferent and hostile. He’s had trouble getting air time, and thanks to an arbitrary set of criteria, may be shut out of the January 14th candidate debate in Des Moines, despite poll numbers that are competitive with some already-qualified participants.
The standard requires four “qualifying” polls showing 5% support or higher, or two qualifying polls showing 7% or higher support in Iowa or New Hampshire. The problem is, there were no new state polls for over a month, making it nearly impossible for candidates on the edge to meet the increased standard.
Andrew Yang, Ken Jeong, what’s the difference? (Also note the pic for “Tulsi Gabbard.”) The Boston Heraldlikes Yang. “He is real. He talks to people — all kinds of people — and is not hindered by the unwritten rules of political tribalism and Twitter wokeness that have become wholly unproductive, if not totally exasperating….We also know that Yang is the most genuine candidate in the Democratic field, he is a successful businessman who has lived in the real world his entire life, and unlike his political competitors, still does.”
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
Protests across Iran continue after the Islamic Republic government admitted their forces shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet. Protestors demand the resignation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
President Donald Trump has tweeted out his support for the protestors, in both English and Farsi:
To the brave, long-suffering people of Iran: I've stood with you since the beginning of my Presidency, and my Administration will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely, and are inspired by your courage.
به مردم شجاع و رنج کشیده ایران: من از ابتدای دوره ریاست جمهوریم با شما ایستادهام و دولت من همچنان با شما خواهد ایستاد. ما اعتراضات شما را از نزدیک دنبال می کنیم. شجاعت شما الهام بخش است.
President Trump's tweet in Farsi expressing his support for Iranian protesters has already earned over 200,000 likes, making it the "most liked Persian tweet" in the social media giant's history, according to a leading think tank adviser.https://t.co/ioyTZ4Vpzc
To the leaders of Iran – DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS. Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching. Turn your internet back on and let reporters roam free! Stop the killing of your great Iranian people!
Iran news, analysis, etc. dominates today’s LinkSwarm!
“The targeting of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force and arguably the second most powerful man in Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a major blow to the Islamic Republic of Iran. His death will likely result in a devastating chain of suspicion and insecurity in Iran’s nodes of power.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
This week, President Donald Trump launched a global round of teeth gnashing when he ordered the killing of the greatest terrorist leader in the modern Middle East, Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was unquestionably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and thousands of others throughout the Middle East — mostly Muslim. His global terror network ran from South America to Europe to Africa to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Soleimani was an unparalleled organizer and a pitiless murderer. His death was richly earned.
But for many in the media and on the domestic and international left, Trump’s action was precipitously “provocative.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Soleimani’s killing — which came directly after a Soleimani-approved terror assault on America’s embassy in Baghdad and amidst reported further plans for escalated terror against American targets — “disproportionate.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., suggested that Trump, not the Iranians, had “escalated” the situation. Former Vice President Joe Biden said that Trump had “just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”
This reaction has been magnified by the media, many of whom have been speculating about the possibility of all-out war between the United States and Iran. Think pieces have been written about whether the United States will reactivate the draft (spoiler alert: No, we won’t). Musings have filled the newspapers about the supposed conflagration prompted not by Iranian evil but by Trumpian reactivity.
All of this smacks less of legitimate concern about what comes next than it does of sheer panic that Trump has overturned a decade of American and European appeasement of the Iranian regime. Ben Rhodes, former President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, architect of the Iran deal and an overt liar who told the American public that Iran was on its way to moderation if only the United States would loosen economic restrictions on the terror state, has placed blame for volatility squarely before Trump. Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser during the Iran deal and another overt liar who told the American public that Islamic terror against our Benghazi embassy was rooted in anger over a YouTube video, soberly informed Americans that “Americans would be wise to brace for war.” Biden suggested that in throwing out the Iran deal, Trump had paved the way for war — and, oh, by the way, the Iran deal was “airtight.”
This is a deliberate misreading of history designed to absolve the Obama administration of its Iran policy debacle. The administration pursued a policy of strengthening Iran economically — and did so while openly acknowledging that Iran would use that newly gained economic strength to pursue terrorism and ballistic missile testing. In speaking of the sanctions relief given to Iran, then-Secretary of State John Kerry explained in January 2016, “I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.”
Snip.
Then Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani. Suddenly, we have been informed by dishonest Democrats and their media allies, Iran has gone rogue.
Nonsense. Iran has been rogue for decades. The Iran deal was simply an attempt to whistle past the graveyard with the terror regime — to pay it off long enough so that President Barack Obama could declare the problem handled. This was, after all, the Obama strategy in Crimea and Syria: Declare a red line; run away from it; pretend that pusillanimous inaction is bravery and deterrence provocation.
Besides Rosenstein, the other defendants named in the complaint are Shawn Henry, Sean Wesley Bridges, Robert Clarke, and Ryan White.
In 2010, then FBI Director Robert Mueller named Shawn Henry as the executive assistant director (EAD) of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB).
Henry left the FBI in 2012 and now is president of CrowdStrike Services, the cybersecurity firm hired by Democratic National Committee to examine its computer network in 2016 after it had been hacked. Crowdstrike ultimately determined Russia had hacked the DNC emails.
Shaun Wesley Bridges served as a Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service for approximately six years, according to the complaint.
Between 2012 and 2014, he was assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, a multi-agency group investigating illegal activity on the Silk Road, a covert online marketplace for illicit goods, including drugs.
In 2015 and 2017, Bridges was convicted of corruption related to his government work, and is now serving a prison sentence.
Defendant Robert Clarke was also a member of the Silk Road Task Force and Ryan White worked as an undercover informant for the DOJ.
White also worked as a contractor operating out of the Baltimore office under a group supervised by Rosenstein, according to the complaint.
Lots of interesting information here, especially the Crowstrike connection. Funny how the same names just keep coming up again and again when it comes to Justice Department abuse of power under Obama… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Hey look, it’s another Democratic Party dark money group! “Mind the Gap, the secretive group quietly reshaping big-money politics in Silicon Valley, is aiming to spend as much as $140 million to boost Democrats in the 2020 election.”
Waiting for President Donald Trump in Toledo:
JAW-DROPPING:
Look at how massive the line is for the #TrumpRally in Toledo tonight!
No longer news: Mexicans kill four other Mexican. Why it should be news: In Kansas City.
Some places in the United States have a long history of Latino settlement, with communities stretching back for generations, even centuries. One is not surprised by the large Mexican-American populations in California, Arizona or Texas, and we’re accustomed to Cubans in Miami, Puerto Ricans in New York, etc. However, on does not think of Kansas City this way, so when the headlines inform us that three guys named Villanueva-Morales, Alatorre and Caballero are charged with killing a combined total of seven people named Meza, Calderon, Anaya, Rodriguez-Gonzalez, Rodriguez and Rodriguez-Santilla in Wyandotte County, Kansas — well, what the heck is going on here? It appears, for example, that two gunmen can open fire in a Kansas City bar without risk that any of their bullets will hit someone who was actually born in America.
As evidence that our immigration problem is absolutely out of control, this situation in Kansas City is rather conclusive, but notice that this criminal mayhem in Kansas is just “local news.” If some deranged “alt-right” white guy had shot four Mexicans in Kansas City, CNN would be providing around-the-clock updates, but because it’s Mexicans killing Mexicans, nobody at the networks seems to care.
Over an intense half-hour before dawn on Wednesday, Iran bombed targets in Iraq, striking in and around two large military bases that house thousands of Iraqi and American servicemen and women.
But when the barrage of 22 missiles was over, the damage appeared to be to the bases’ infrastructure, not to people.
In a short statement released on Wednesday morning, the Joint Command in Baghdad, which includes both Iraqi and international representatives, said that neither coalition nor Iraqi forces had “recorded any losses.”
Of the 22 missiles, the majority were aimed at Al-Asad, an air base in the desert of western Anbar, an entirely Sunni Muslim area. Of the 17 missiles aimed at the base, two fell outside it near the city of Hit, but did not explode, officials said.
Five of the missiles were aimed at an air base in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and hit the headquarters building. Damage assessments were ongoing on Wednesday.
Iran announced that the missile strike had “concluded proportionate measures” against the United States in response for the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani by an American drone strike on Friday.
So we take out their combination of Erwin Rommel and Che Guevara, plus a Random Jihadi Assortment Pack, while they blow up some local concrete and promptly announced “OK, we’re done?” And 22 missiles suggests that Iran’s military has all the staying power of an 80-year old man whose Viagra prescription has run out.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Tuesday that reconnaissance of the state’s computer networks by foreign operatives has surged in the last two days to 10,000 attempts per minute.
While it’s not uncommon for adversaries to attempt attacks on an hourly basis, Texas has detected increased activity from “outside the United States, including Iran,” according to the Texas Department of Information Resources.
There have been warnings of Iranian cyber attacks in the wake of the killing of an Iranian general in a U.S. airstrike last week.
The Texas agency emphasized that it has successfully blocked every attempt to gain entry, but declined to explain exactly where hackers have tried to gain access.
The agency “constantly detects and blocks malicious traffic on the networks of the multiple state agencies it services,” according to a statement issued by the state after Abbott met with his domestic terrorism taskforce. “As global threats to cybersecurity increase, we urge Texans to be vigilant and use heightened awareness as they conduct Internet activity.”
A few relevant pieces about just how badly Iran has screwed up:
Iran has not developed its capabilities and regional strength in order to prevail in a conventional 21st century conflict. It has rather focused on pumping money and military hardware into regional allies, proxies and militias with the aim of spreading political prosperity and enabling them to project power in the region and beyond…
Given the extent of its regional activities, how much money is it actually pumping into its neighbors? The Soufan Center’s research shows where Iranian money is flowing in the Middle East and where Iranian-backed proxies and militant groups are active. Syria receives an estimated $6 billion annually of economic aid, subsidized oil, commodity transfers and military aid. Iraq receives up to $1 billion, some of which ends up in the hands of militia organizations. Lebanon, which is of course home to Hezbollah, sees around $700 million of financial support, practically all of which goes to the militant group.
It is hard to understand Iran supreme leader Khamenei’s blunder in attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. He either believed that Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as Western liberal media breathlessly and continuously reported, or might have been misled by John Kerry’s incompetent advice (apparently, Kerry met again with Khamenei’s emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably.
Iran desperately wanted a war — drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s heart of oil production, false-flag hits on oil tankers, unrest in Yemen — all aimed at this goal. Trump restraint in responding to these provocations must have been disappointing. But as Tehran resorted to attack the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, it must have realized that it had overplayed its hand when the reaction was surgical, devastating, and unexpected: the elimination of the mass murderer Qassem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Khamenei’s right-hand man and chief executioner.
Channeling Lenin, Khamenei must be asking himself: What is to be done? Contrary to doomsayers’ forecasts, his options are limited.
His first reaction in fact was to declare: “Iran will stop abiding to the terms of the 2015 Nuclear Deal,” by which it had never abided (inadvertently revealing that his fatwa against nuclear weapons was false). As face-saving measures go, it verges on pathetic.
Any way you look at it, we are here because Obama and Europe forgot or preferred to ignore that Iran is an apocalyptic messianic regime bent on exporting terrorism and Shi’itism to intimidate its enemies and should never be allowed to develop or possess nuclear weapons.
Iran has some difficult decisions. They and their proxies, such as Hezbollah, promise revenge, but they have to decide if Trump has changed.
At the beginning of the Trump Administration, the Iranians feared the American president would challenge the regime. The Iranians have always been afraid of a direct conflict with the United States, and they were careful to farm out their strikes against Washington, D.C. and its allies to their proxies, from Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad. Trump wanted a deal, and for a while he was swayed by the likes of Rand Paul, who advised the president to pursue an agreement with the mullahs.
The effort failed. Ayatollah Khamenei did not, and does not want a deal with the Americans. Khamenei was stalling for time, hoping that the 2020 elections would result in a Trump defeat, and hence a more Obama-ish president. Meanwhile, attacks against us continued apace, reaching their apex with the killing of an American contractor in Iraq.
Trump had changed his mind; he saw the Iranian position accurately, and unleashed the American military against Iranians in Iraq. To the astonishment of the Iranian regime, it was not a case of tit-for-tat. Trump approved a full response, from drone attacks to air assaults, to the use of special forces and a rapid reinforcement of American strength on the ground. Soleimani and his buddies were killed. The Iraqi Parliament declined to throw out American forces, and, in polling results, 67% of Iraqis said they were in favor of maintaining security agreements with the U.S.
There is a lot going on, and a lot of confusion, much of it revolving around the notion that “war” between Iran and the United States has become more likely.
That is misguided. As Eli Lake tweeted, it’s misleading to say that the killing of Soleimani is the opening of a new war…It’s more accurate to say that it opens a new chapter in an ongoing war, a war that Iran declared immediately following the revolution of 1979. The new chapter is reminiscent of the older ones. An intermediary from Oman was told by the Tehran regime that Iran is not interested in having the Omanis mediate disagreements with America. The Iranian leaders said they would only seek revenge for the death of Soleimani.
One of the keenest observers of the situation, Omar Taheri, recently tweeted that all the Iranian bluster about the Soleimani killing should not distract us from reality:
Soleimani was a cog, OK a big cog, in an infernal machine that remains operational & must be broken. We must remain focused on our real goal: the dissolution of the Islamic Republic.
I do wonder how we’re supposed to take Ali Khamenei seriously when he’s channeling Curly from the Three Stooges:
This was the current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khemenei, during Soleimani’s funeral.
Castro drops Out, Williamson lays everybody off, Q4 fundraising numbers drop, Biden tells coal miners to start slinging code, Klobuchar talks UFOs, and a three way tie for first in Iowa. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!
Those who expected Sanders to fade after his heart attack were badly mistaken. He has enough money to fight Biden all the way to the convention, and his broad small amount donor base can continue to raise money for him without hitting any campaign contribution limits.
Biden comes in third. Has any frontrunner ever trailed so badly in the money race? It suggests an inability to find the right people to fill staff roles.
Yang’s haul is hugely impressive, considering that no one (myself included) gave him any chance early on. He’s got enough funding to stay in through at least Super Tuesday, where he has a shot at picking up at least some of California’s 416 pledged delegates.
Though relegated to second place, Buttigieg continues to punch above his weight in fundraising.
No reports yet on how much cash Bloomberg and Steyer shoveled into their own campaigns this quarter.
Hill/Harris X: Biden 28, Sanders 16, Warren 11, Bloomberg 11, Buttigieg 6, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Castro 2. Delaney 2, Gabbard 2. Bloomberg at 11 ought to terrify the other candidates. But why is Sanders called out as “Bernie” on the chart, despite everyone else being referred to by their last name?
With an unprecedented advertising spending binge, billionaire presidential wannabees Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have launched themselves all the way to….the middle tier of the Democratic primary field.
The two candidates have spent a combined $200 million on television ads—with Bloomberg accounting for about $120 million of that total since he jumped into the race less than a month ago. No other candidate in the field has spent more than $18 million on ads so far, Politico reports. Bloomberg spent more than that in the first week after entering the race in late November.
Despite the advertising blitz, Bloomberg and Steyer are almost certainly wasting their money chasing political power. While it is foolish to rule out any electoral outcome in a world where Donald Trump is president, voters have responded to both Democratic billionaires with a resounding meh, and there seems to be little reason to think that will change [this] year, no matter how much money the two candidates pour into the race.
There are two lessons here. First, Bloomberg and Steyer seem to be on an inadvertent crusade to prove that progressive fears about the influence of money in politics are largely unfounded.
Secondly, the two billionaire candidates are providing a real-world lesson about opportunity costs by setting fire to their huge campaign war chests. They’ve got the means to change the world, but getting involved in politics isn’t the best way to do it.
The Atlantic offers a cheat sheet that includes the also-rans and never-rans. Most interesting tidbit: “[Deval] Patrick’s estranged father played in the alien jazz great Sun Ra’s Arkestra.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden tells coal miners to learn to code. Amazing how someone who has never mined coal or written code so confidently asserts that one who has done one job can easily do the other. “Biden touts himself as the embodiment of honesty while spreading a well-known lie. That’s an exquisite form of lying.” Speaking of indicting yourself:
A young man tells Joe Biden that his father lost his health insurance plan and the cost doubled, even though Obama promised insurances will be cheaper. He asks if Joe was lying or if he didn't understand Obamacare when he supported it.
But no matter what Biden says, his poll numbers seem unsinkable. Another editorialist points out that Biden’s immunity to his many gaffes shows why he’ll win the nomination:
It starts with the polls. Biden has been dominant. Since Real Clear Politics started its polling average in December 2018, Biden has led for all but one day. Sen. Elizabeth Warren eclipsed him by 0.2 percentage points on Oct. 2. She now trails him by 13 percent and is in third place, also trailing Sen. Bernie Sanders.
This isn’t how many political pundits expected last year to go. They chalked up Biden’s pre-announcement lead to his high name ID. He was supposed to gaffe his way into an early exit. He wasn’t progressive enough for the liberal wing of the party either.
What makes Biden’s durability look sustainable is that he hasn’t been a great candidate. Far from it. His debates have been cringeworthy. In July, he messed up the address of his campaign website. He made a bizarre reference to record players in September. In November, he forgot that Sen. Kamala Harris — who was on the stage with him — was a female, African-American senator.
The campaign trail hasn’t been much better. During a September CNN town hall, his left eye filled with blood, presumably from a blood vessel bursting. He called New Hampshire “Vermont” during a summer visit. In August, he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” He appeared to mean “rich” not “white,” but that mistake could have ended another candidate’s campaign.
Biden’s done a better job undercutting his own candidacy than any of his opponents ever could have — and his support has hardly budged.
He keeps promising bipartisanship. I think Republicans all remember how “bipartisan” the Obama Administration was…
As president, I'll turn the East Room into an open office plan, where I’ll sit with our team.
I’ll use the Oval Office for some official functions – never for tweeting – but the rest of the time, I’ll be where a leader should be: with the team. https://t.co/zIU3ZL5uIvpic.twitter.com/jLwWKJCmxw
He answered a Military Times questionnaire. It’s full of “on the one hand, on the other” platitudes, though he does say he’ll negotiate with the Taliban, but also leave a small force in Afghanistan, which sounds like it amounts to “stay in and lose,” with a side plate of living tripwires. He did approve of the Suleimani strike.
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Billionaires backing Buttigieg. “Forty billionaires and their spouses have donated to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, according to an analysis of federal election filings, making the South Bend, Indiana mayor a favorite among America’s richest people.” That includes a surprisingly high number of hedge fund managers, as well as Google founder Eric Schmidt’s wife, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom’s wife, Square founder Jim McKelvey’s wife, David Geffen, Barry Diller, Netflix’ Reed Hastings, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, the wife of casino video game mogul Jon Yarbrough, members of the Ziff family, the Pritzker family, the NFL Giant’s Tisch family, etc. etc. etc. “Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left.”
As the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries draw near and South Bend’s boy wonder, Pete Buttigieg, seems buoyant in the all-important early-state polls, “Mayor Pete” has been perpetually dogged by a major issue: the youngest and most activated voters in his party all seem to—how to put this delicately?—hate his guts.
Normally the first candidate of a generation can expect to ride a wave of youth enthusiasm, as John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton once did. For the 37-year-old Buttigieg, it’s been quite the opposite. The newly radicalized Teen Vogue invoked a cringeworthy class-warfare pun to declare his campaign a “Lesson in ‘Petey’ Bourgeois Politics.” Jacobin, tribune of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, has developed seemingly an entire vertical focused on slamming Mayor Pete. A writer for Out magazine, putting it in starker terms, tweeted that if he “had balls he’d run as the republican he is against trump in the primary.”
Why is the enmity from young, left-wing activists toward Buttigieg so visceral? It’s true that they favor Bernie Sanders, but Buttigieg comes in for a type of loathing that surpasses even that they hold for Sanders’ older rivals, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
But those explanations are still too general to explain the fury inspired by a fourth-place presidential contender and Midwestern college-town mayor. And it’s not his ideology: The resentment he inspires runs much deeper than that earned by the Amy Klobuchars and Michael Bennets of the world—both of whom have more politically moderate tendencies than Buttigieg, who has, among other positions, argued for raising the minimum wage to $15, introducing a public health care option, expanding the size of the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College. (Asked for comment for this article, a representative from the Buttigieg campaign told Politico that staffers are occasionally vexed by the cold reception to a platform that’s well to the left of any recent Democratic presidential nominee.)
The unspoken truth about the furor Buttigieg arouses is that his success threatens a core belief of young progressives: that their ideology owns the future, and that the rise of millennials into Democratic politics is going to bring an inevitable demographic triumph for the party’s far left wing.
Snip.
It’s especially galling that the first millennial to take a serious run at the presidency is nothing like the left’s imagined savior. Buttigieg is a veteran, an outspoken Christian, a former McKinsey consultant, and, frankly, closer to Mitt Romney than Sanders or generational peer AOC in his aw shucks personal affect. In the eyes of radicalized young leftists, Buttigieg isn’t just an ideological foe, he’s worse than that: He’s a square.
Snip.
Buttigieg is a young professional with an elite pedigree who’s chosen to buy into the system as a reformer instead of attacking it as a revolutionary. To a certain class of left-wing thought leaders, he’s an unwelcome reminder of the squeaky-clean moderates with whom they once rubbed elbows. And quite possibly, his elite credentials may also be an unwelcome reminder of their own. The editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, for instance, isn’t just a random antagonist: He’s also a fellow Harvard alumnus.
The educated young people leading the left have worked closely with these overachievers throughout their careers—often at the same elite institutions they deride, rightfully or not, as venal consensus factories. Such activists are baffled by their counterparts’ optimism and adherence to tradition in the face of the Trump era’s grimness and vulgarity.
And, again, it seems many of their peers agree. Buttigieg does not enjoy considerable support among young people. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll of Iowa voters, he placed a distant third among 18-to-29-year-olds, behind Sanders and Warren. But he does appeal to a certain kind of young person, as now represented in the cultural imagination by the “High Hopes” dancers. And to the self-renouncing meritocrats who act as thought leaders to the young left, those people represent both a personal frustration and a political fear—that the institutions of tomorrow may yet be built by those with faith in yesterday’s ideals.
The path to Washington may be clearer for them than their radical counterparts, even as more millennials age into political life. The youngest Democratic member of Congress is, of course, the 30-year-old AOC, who seems all but inevitable to succeed Sanders as the standard-bearer for democratic socialism in America. But if you look at the next 10 youngest Democrats in Congress, they include mostly moderates: the venture capitalist Josh Harder, the military veteran and Blue Dog Max Rose, and Conor Lamb, whose district lies deep in Pennsylvania’s Trump country.
When it comes down to it, the hard left would rather seize control of the Democratic Party than win elections, and Buttigieg refuses to immanentize the eschaton. Another look inside those high dollar fundraisers:
At an annual charity fund-raiser in October, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, shared a table with the designer Michael Kors and Pete Buttigieg, then the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who wore one of his trademark navy suits.
The event was a benefit for God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit that began delivering meals to New Yorkers with AIDS in 1986 and has since expanded to serve other homebound people. On the second floor of Cipriani’s South Street location, guests bid for meals with the actor Neil Patrick Harris, watched the model Iman receive an award for her philanthropic efforts and heard a short speech from Mr. Buttigieg, who was also honored that evening. He said volunteers for the organization had offered sustenance “in substance and in soul.”
Sitting at a table near the stage was the theater producer Jordan Roth, who back in April held an event for Mr. Buttigieg’s presidential campaign at his home in the West Village, at up to $2,800 per head. Nearby was the board chairman of God’s Love, Terrence Meck, who had co-hosted an event for Mr. Buttigieg in Provincetown, Mass., just after the July 4 holiday. (Tickets for that ran upward of $1,000 per person.)
Snip.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr. Buttigieg’s dinners and fund-raisers — complete with cozy pictures on Instagram of Mr. Buttigieg standing beside high-net-worth bundlers — have turned into grist for his critics.
Guests at a December fund-raiser for Mr. Buttigieg held at the New York home of Kevin Ryan, an internet entrepreneur behind Gilt Groupe and Business Insider, were greeted outside by protesters who banged pots and pans and called Mr. Buttigieg “Wall Street Pete.”
The police arrived when a protester got inside. By that point, Mr. Buttigieg had left for Ms. Wintour’s West Village townhouse, where a campaign dinner was being held. Tickets cost up to $2,800 each and the actress Sienna Miller was among the attendees.
Days later, Mr. Buttigieg appeared at a fund-raiser held inside a Napa Valley wine cave. Afterward, progressive activists reached deep into political crisis history to note that one of the hosts, Craig Hall, who is now the owner of Hall Wines in Rutherford, Calif., was a real estate developer involved in the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s. Mr. Hall went to Jim Wright, then speaker of the House, for help when he was facing bankruptcy — and the cascade of events led to a bailout for Mr. Hall, a congressional ethics investigation and, ultimately, Mr. Wright’s resignation as speaker.
Mr. Hall’s wife, Kathryn Walt Hall, co-hosted the Napa benefit. She was a prolific donor to President Bill Clinton and served as ambassador to Austria from 1997 to 2001.
Snip.
Prominent donors in Los Angeles argue that Mr. Buttigieg is also approaching celebrity fund-raising differently than Hillary Clinton did four years ago.
While her campaign publicized the appearances of Katy Perry and Lena Dunham at events, he’s kept a lid on similar associations.
The fund-raiser that Gwyneth Paltrow held on his behalf last May? The campaign declined to publicize it. Instead, Mr. Buttigieg spoke in front of cameras that evening during a $25 (and up) appearance at the Abbey — sort of a gay, West Hollywood equivalent of dining at Sylvia’s in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton.
“He wasn’t doing a song and dance with Gwyneth on national television,” said Simon Halls, a prominent entertainment industry publicist who in July was scheduled to co-host a reception at the television producer Ryan Murphy’s home. (That event was canceled after a white police officer fatally shot a black man in South Bend; the reception has not been rescheduled.)
An offer by the designer Tom Ford to dress Mr. Buttigieg during the course of the campaign? Declined.
In July, Mr. Buttigieg appeared at the Provincetown fund-raiser Mr. Meck hosted with Bryan Rafanelli, an event planner whose clients have included the Clintons. Although tickets cost a minimum of $1,000, Mr. Meck said the event took place after a free, packed and publicized town hall event. As Mr. Meck told it, Mr. Buttigieg told him that he wanted to spend his time in Provincetown actually meeting people. Later in the summer, he hit the Hamptons to collect more money.
Interesting approach. “I don’t want your star power, just your money.”
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: Dropped out January 2, 2020. “Castro failed to make the last two debates or even achieve 2% in the polls despite promising government handouts for basically everything. Along with Sen. Cory Booker, he whined to the DNC about unfair qualifications for the January primary debate. More than likely he would not have participated in that debate.” “Dropout Julian Castro’s insufferably woke presidential campaign won’t be missed“:
Give Julian Castro some credit: In a crowded 2020 Democratic field originally featuring cringeworthy candidates such as Beto O’Rourke and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the former housing and urban development secretary still managed to run the most insufferably woke presidential campaign of this cycle.
Thursday morning brought the official end of Castro’s campaign. But it never really got off the ground, and the candidate failed to qualify for the November debate, getting under 2% of the vote in polling averages. Outside of a few fringe Marxist professors and woke liberal activists, Castro’s campaign was so radical that even Democratic primary voters weren’t buying it.
It’s not hard to see why. Castro’s only memorable contributions to the 2020 race are viral moments where he embarrassed himself.
For one, there was his cringey decision to randomly pronounce certain words with a Spanish accent during Democratic debates, despite not actually being a native Spanish speaker. Then there was his call for completely decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and attacks on other, slightly less terrible Democrats who declined to endorse his radical proposal.
Don’t forget the countless shudder-worthy instances where Castro pandered to the woke crowd with fact-free rants about “transgender women of color” being gunned down in the street in a supposed epidemic of anti-transgender hate crimes. Castro ignored the complete lack of evidence for this narrative, instead choosing to stir up bogus outrage for votes. His pandering even included a bizarre call for expanding abortion access to transgender women (aka biological males). Castro was also the first candidate to honor “International Pronouns Day” by putting his preferred pronouns, he and him, in his Twitter profile. This was, of course, a pure virtue-signal: Everyone already knew he was a man.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Esquire writer has a case of the sadz over his withdrawal. “Castro should have been viable all the way to the convention. (This is also true of Jay Inslee and Kamala Harris.) But the merciless criteria of polls and money worked against all three of them.” No, all three are out because all of them sucked in various ways, and all of them were terrible, inauthentic candidates spouting far-left bromides. Ace of Spades HQ: “He never stopped talking about giving trans women pap smears and abortions. Weird that he never connected with his presumptive Latino base.” 538’s postmortem talks about debate missteps but paints a picture of general suckage.
Whereas Joe Biden seems permanently diminished by his own verbal and intellectual confusion and by his son’s self-dealing, Bernie is getting stronger.
He has raised the most money of all the Democratic candidates, by far — some $95 million in 2019 from 5 million donations — though the average contribution to Bernie is $18. He raised $34.5 million in the last quarter alone. He got 40,000 new donors on the last day of the year.
When Mr. Sanders renounced bundlers and PACs it was said that he had unilaterally disarmed himself in the money race. Instead he is killing it.
Mr. Sanders is also raising money in the 200 “pivot” counties Barack Obama carried in 2012 and Democrats lost to Donald Trump in the swing states in 2016.
And he is not only acceptable to but well thought of by an astounding 75 percent of his party.
Those are singular metrics.
He is also the only candidate in a position to take either first or second in the first contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.
He polls as well as Mr. Biden in a direct matchup against Mr. Trump, though surely, as Mr. Sanders says, Donald Trump could eat Mr. Biden’s lunch on his votes in favor of NAFTA and the endless and futile Iraq War.
The money race and the size of his crowds show that Bernie Sanders is connecting, just as they show Joe Biden is not. His resilience is no fluke.
Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Hits donor threshold, hasn’t hit the polling threshold. “In addition to garnering the necessary number of voters, Democratic candidates need to reach 5 percent support in at least four DNC-approved polls, or at least 7 percent support in two single-state polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina. So far, Steyer is polling at 5 percent in two of the four polls conducted in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.”
Many Democratic presidential candidates, such as former vice president Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), have robust organizations. But among locals, Warren’s organization stands out.
While the campaign has declined to release exact numbers, the Massachusetts senator is believed to have more than 100 field staff fanned out across the state, including some who have been on the ground for the better part of a year. Warren staffers have become deeply embedded, showing up at high school sports games, book clubs, bingo nights and potluck dinners dressed in the campaign’s signature liberty green attire. In Fairfield, Iowa, a family recently named their newborn goat Herb, after the Warren field organizer who has prolifically canvassed that town for months. In Mason City, an organizer who was in the hospital for emergency surgery used his recovery time to pitch the ER staff on Warren’s candidacy.
The stories about Warren staffers in Iowa and how far they go to sell her candidacy regularly circulate among rival campaigns, eliciting both eye rolls but also grudging admiration. “It’s like, where did they find these kids?” marveled a longtime Iowa Democratic activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she endorsed another candidate in the race.
Caveat: Every one of these borderline-admiring pieces on a female Democratic candidate’s organization (be it Warren, Harris, or Gillibrand) always seems to come from a female writer, and this one’s from Holly Bailey. Warren calls Suleimani a murderer, then backtracks due to pushback from the hate-America left. “Elizabeth Warren Opens Casino To Help Finance Campaign.”
Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Flush with cash, Yang wrestles with where to spend it.”
Andrew Yang has more money than his campaign knows what to do with.
He still can’t quite get accustomed to his surprising fundraising haul — Yang collected $16.5 million in the fourth quarter — or how to allocate it in the run-up to the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.
“We’re going to buy gold coins, and then put them in a vault, and then I’m going to go on top of the pile of gold coins and then wave my arms and legs up and down,” he joked in an interview.
The reality is that his newfound campaign riches are creating internal tension about whether to beef up the Iowa operation or bet it all in New Hampshire.
Yang’s strong focus has always been on New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state where he has spent more time than any of the top-tier candidates. The campaign sees it as ripe ground for him — Democratic voters relish their independent-streak and showed they were open to non-traditional candidates in the past, delivering Sen. Bernie Sanders a decisive win in the 2016 primary.
Their goal, to date, has been to finish at the top of the second-tier in order to stay relevant after the early-voting states. Suddenly though, with money to play in Iowa as well, there is a vigorous debate about where to spend the cash and Yang’s other precious commodity — his time.
“I think if we overperform expectations will have a very powerful narrative coming out of New Hampshire that people don’t expect us to be at the top four here,” Yang said after wrapping up the final of 14 events during a four-day trip here. “If we break the top four, I think people will see that we have a ton of energy behind us.”
Yang’s $16.5 million — 65 percent more than the previous quarter — placed him fifth in terms of fundraising for the Democratic presidential candidates, about $4.7 million less than Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who came in fourth. He raised almost five times more than Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, another second-tier candidate who has invested so heavily in New Hampshire that she has all but moved here.
Honestly, instead of Iowa, he should probably look to Super Tuesday and build out an organization in California and either North Carolina or Texas, all of which have significant concentrations of high tech industries, where workers seem somewhat more attuned to his issues. Texas has a bigger population, and thus is more delegate rich, and a bigger concentration of Asians, but the diverse markets are brutal for ad campaigns. On the other hand, a $5 million direct mail/TV/radio push in the Research Triangle in North Carolina might well make an impression. Ohio is going to screw him out of a place on the ballot due to a technical filing issue. Yang has pretty much the same reaction to Biden’s “Coal miners should learn to code” suggestion:
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang on jobs: "Someone who suggests that coal miners become coders is generally neither of those things." pic.twitter.com/2dmBRXfKys
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
Suleimani is no longer simply a soldier; he is a calculating and practical strategist. Most ruthlessly and at the cost of all else, he has forged lasting relationships to bolster Iran’s position in the region. No other individual has had comparable success in aligning and empowering Shiite allies in the Levant. His staunch defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has effectively halted any progress by the Islamic State and other rebel groups, all but ensuring that Assad remains in power and stays solidly allied to Iran. Perhaps most notably, under Suleimani’s leadership, the Quds Force has vastly expanded its capabilities. His shrewd pragmatism has transformed the unit into a major influencer in intelligence, financial, and political spheres beyond Iran’s borders.
It would be unwise, however, to study Suleimani’s success without situating him in a broader geopolitical context. He is a uniquely Iranian leader, a clear product of the country’s outlook following the 1979 revolution. His expansive assessment of Iranian interests and rights matches those common among Iranian elites. Iran’s resistance toward the United States’ involvement in the Middle East is a direct result of U.S. involvement in the Iran-Iraq War, during which Suleimani’s worldview developed. Above all else, Suleimani is driven by the fervent nationalism that is the lifeblood of Iran’s citizens and leadership.
Suleimani’s accomplishments are, in large part, due to his country’s long-term approach toward foreign policy. While the United States tends to be spasmodic in its responses to international affairs, Iran is stunningly consistent in its objectives and actions.
The Quds Force commander’s extended tenure in his role—he assumed control of the unit in 1998—is another important factor. A byproduct of Iran’s complicated political environment, Suleimani enjoys freedom of action over an extended time horizon that is the envy of many U.S. military and intelligence professionals. Because a leader’s power ultimately lies in the eyes of others and is increased by the perceived likelihood of future power, Suleimani has been able to act with greater credibility than if he were viewed as a temporary player.
Ben Shapiro says that Suleimani’s death is great news:
On Thursday, in the most audacious and brave move of his presidency, President Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s top terrorist, Qassem Soleimani — a man who was also the top general of the country. Commentators have compared Iran’s loss of Soleimani to the loss of the Defense Secretary, head of the CIA, and the head of the FBI simultaneously. Soleimani was the man closest to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and some speculated that he would succeed Khamenei at some point. Now, he’s been reduced to pulp.
His death makes the world a significantly better and safer place. Soleimani was responsible for the killing of hundreds of American troops in Iraq (by State Department estimates, 17 percent of all Americans killed in Iraq were Soleimani’s handiwork), the arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon with tens of thousands of rockets, the Houthi terrorism in Yemen, the building of Islamic Jihad, and a bevy of terror plots all around the world, including the latest assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Speculation that this represents an “act of war” is utterly baseless — Soleimani is a terrorist who was killed while abroad, in Iraq, planning further acts of terrorism.
Suggestions that the Trump administration is responsible for “escalation” with Iran — after months of Iranian aggression in international waters and in foreign countries, after downing an American drone and attacking an American embassy — are absurd and morally disgusting. When Nancy Pelosi tweets that it is “disproportionate” to kill a terror leader planning action against Americans and our assets and allies, she’s not just reflecting moral confusion — she’s evidencing moral foolishness of the highest order.
Snip.
it’s obvious that President Trump was attempting to restore a deterrence against Iran that had been completely disintegrated by the Obama administration. History didn’t begin with Trump, and Iranian aggression didn’t start with the end of the Iran nuclear deal. Far from it. Iran has become more powerful and aggressive thanks to the overt planning of the Obama administration.
President Obama’s preferred strategy with Iran was wishful thinking and bribery. The Obama administration openly lied to the American people, claiming that there was a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian government that would be elevated through signing them checks and ushering them into the world economy. That was utter nonsense, as national security aide Ben Rhodes later admitted. The Obama administration engaged in the worst sort of appeasement, guaranteeing billions of dollars in economic growth to a regime dedicated to the destruction of American interests around the world and hell-bent on regional domination.
When Trump entered office, after years of increased Iranian aggression in the region, he pulled out of the bribery arrangement. Iran increased its aggression, including targeting American interests and allies directly. Trump ignored that or responded minimally for years. Then the Iranians attacked an American embassy. That was the final straw, and Soleimani was on the chopping block.
The fact that the Trump administration was unwilling to pay off the world’s worst terror regime, that the terror regime never stopped pursuing terrorism, and that the Trump administration responded — all of that Trump administration action is not only perfectly reasonable, but perfectly moral.
For all this talk of the killing being “unlawful” from the ruffled petticoats crowd, remember that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in it’s entirity, including the Qods Force, has been designated a terrorist group by the State Department. Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, has also noted that it was lawful:
The targeted killing of Soleimani was a lawful, proportional, preemptive military action against a combatant enemy who had killed and was planning to kill Americans. See my book: Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways.
Insta weighs in. He notes that an Iranian resistance leaders hailed the killing as “an ‘irreparable blow’ to the Iranian regime.” (Caveat: Resistance leaders and disgruntled ExPats are always saying things like this. Remember how Ahmed Chalabi said Iraqis were just itching for a chance to rise up against Saddam Hussein en mass when we invaded?)
Given the indisputable terrorist activities of IRGC, with Soleimani at the helm, it would seem that celebrating his death would come naturally, in the same way that commentators on both sides of the aisle expressed relief and joy that Osama bin Laden had finally been captured and killed in 2011. According to the Pentagon, at the time of his death, Soleimani was in the process of planning future attacks on Americans diplomats and service members currently in the region, his death being treated as a means of foiling those plans and possibly deterring future ones from taking shape.
But reactions to the killing from media talking heads were predictably pathetic, given that they immediately assume the direct opposite of Trump’s position on any given issue, no matter the level of intellectual gymnastics such maneuvers require.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s targeted killing of the terrorist leader has been deemed a litany of unseemly adjectives, including “reckless” and “incoherent.” Perhaps the most breathtakingly stupid reaction has been the notion that this attack somehow represented the first strike or an “act of war,” as if Iran and its proxies had not been targeting U.S. bases, seizing control of oil tankers, and laying siege on our embassy in Baghdad these last few months.
And the tweets! So many tweets! Evidently killing murderous Islamic terrorists just brings out the best in Twitter. Whoever popped up to do the Suleimani parody account is on fire:
Well:
1) It's very hot 2) All the beer is warm 3) All the virgins are men 4) This Adolf guy won't shut up 5) Lot of pissed off suicide bombers saying this wasn't what they signed up for https://t.co/7fYCqWfTds
Perhaps it would have been a better idea to send him $1.7 billion in unmarked bills, in pallets on planes in the dead of night, so he could kill more Americans? https://t.co/t5Mj2SMyq5
Naturally, for CNN this is a chance to strike at Donnie Two-Scoops:
like @charlescwcooke said, this is not the behavior of a news network. this is the behavior of a politcal activist group with press credentials. https://t.co/CFS4pONfen
Soleimani has the blood of upwards of 600 American troops on his hands, how could Pelosi possibly think putting him in the ground is 'disproportionate'?
Iran sabotages 6 oil tankers in Strait of Hormuz Trump downplays it
Iran shoots down US drone Trump downplays it
Attacks Saudi Oil field Trump does nothing
Iran attacks US embassy Trump finally responds
America haters: WHY DOES HE WANT WAR?!
— United States Space Force Ⓥ (@SpaceCorpsUS) January 3, 2020
Qassem Soleimani masterminded Iran’s reign of terror for decades, including the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Tonight, he got what he richly deserved, and all those American soldiers who died by his hand also got what they deserved: justice. https://t.co/1wkjtvj2QA
POTUS has the authority to eliminate an imminent threat without congressional approval. No one at this point knows if the alleged threat is real. It's not like Soleimani has never attacked US interests in the middle east before. 20 incidents in 2019 alone including US embassy pic.twitter.com/1ScQ9m8NGA
But what? We should just keep letting the IRGC/PMF attack Americans while you move your red line back? Maybe we should pay them off with a pallet of cash?
This kind of thinking is absurd and driven by partisanship and cowardice. (3/3)
— Whitest Whine / Miss Karl Lagerfeld (@WhitestWhine) January 4, 2020
Finally: “Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani.” ” Flags were spotted flying at half-mast around the country, notably at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and in front of several celebrities’ homes. The celebrities went out and bought an American flag for the first time just to fly it at half-mast for this important time of grief.”
