Since December we have had three polls come out which show Bernie Sanders with a double-digit lead on Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and now a new poll is out which, in addition to showing the Senator from Vermont with a four point lead in the Granite State, shows him within striking distance in Iowa.
Here is more:
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders are competitive among likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa and among New Hampshire likely Democratic primary voters including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate. In Iowa, Clinton has 48% to 45% for Sanders. In New Hampshire, Sanders is backed by 50% compared with 46% for Clinton.
January 10th open thread: Fight the Good Fight
Here is the open thread for Sunday, January 10th. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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Well this is an election year and we all must fight the good fight all the way to November, here is Triumph performing “Fight the Good Fight” live in 1982.
Enjoy:
frui diem
The news continues to go from bad to worse in New Hampshire for Hillary Clinton. Last month a poll showed her behind Bernie Sanders by 10 points in the Granite State and now a poll has come out which shows Bernie Sanders extending his lead slightly.
Here is more:
Bernie Sanders has soared to a 13-point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in a Fox News survey out Friday, nearly a month to the day that primary voters will make their decision at the polls on Feb. 9.
Sanders, who in November held a slim 1-point advantage over Clinton in the same poll (45 percent to 44 percent), this time took 50 percent of the vote to 37 percent for Clinton.
And another poll shows him with a 14 point lead:
the latest CBS News/YouGov survey polling primary voters showed Sanders with a 14-point advantage over Clinton (56 percent to 42 percent) in mid-December.
We now have three polls which show Bernie Sanders with a double-digit lead over the former Secretary of State and this could spell trouble for her, especially after a recent survey found that 20% of Democratic voters would vote for Donald Trump if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.
If Bernie Sanders pulls off the win in New Hampshire and Democratic voters read the news about defectors heading into the Trump camp the dominoes could begin to topple.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Barack Obama claims there are neighborhoods where it is easier and cheaper for a twelve year old to buy a gun than a book
Shortly after announcing his new Executive Actions on gun control, which included expanded background checks and also violating HIPPA laws, Barack Obama went on CNN and held a town hall style meeting in an attempt to gain support for this actions and to make it appear as if he has done something to make our children safer.
He made a couple of comments which I guess I could best describe as silly. Bunkerville has one of them over at his place; in that one, in a rather incoherent way, the President claims the American Revolution was based on a conspiracy theory. But this one might be even more silly; in the clip below Barack Obama actually claims that in some neighborhoods it is easier and cheaper for a twelve year old to purchase a gun than a book.
The absurdity of this statement needs no further explanation, does it? I am just glad Barack Obama solved this problem because there was an epidemic of twelve year old children going into gun shops and purchasing guns without passing a background check.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Newly released email shows Hillary Clinton instructing adviser to send email with no markings
Hillary Clinton defended, and still defends, conducting all of her State Department business on an unsecured private email server by claiming she neither sent nor received any classified information while using this server. This of course would mean she neither sent nor received any classified information while she was Secretary of State because she conducted all of her official business on this server, the suggestion is absurd on its face.
It would also mean we would have to ignore the fact that some emails are born classified whether they are marked as such or not; the person sending and receiving the emails is supposed to be smart enough to understand when you are in communication either with or about the head of another nation that you might not want that information falling into the wrong hands. Surely the smartest woman in America would know this…
But now we might be learning why Hillary Clinton never received any emails which were marked classified when she read them and that is because, according to this story, at least once as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructed her top adviser on how to send emails without any markings on it. Here is more:
Then vs now: Ann Coulter on Ted Cruz’s eligibility
Please allow me to be perfectly blunt here: in my opinion Ann Coulter is a hypocrite and an opportunist who changes her political opinions for personal gain, attention, and promotion. Do you need some examples? Here goes: Back in 2012, while she was supporting Chris Christie for President, Ann Coulter declared that Mitt Romney must be stopped at all costs, but then when the governor of New Jersey endorsed Mitt Romney she became his biggest supporter. She even went so far as to claim Romney care was the conservative alternative to Obamacare even though this was the blueprint for Obamacare. That was strike one against her and at that point she lost whatever credibility she might have had with me, but I continue. (By the way, she now has turned against Chris Christie.)
Strike two: During the 2014 mid-term election Ann Coulter conveniently released a new book entitled Never Trust a Liberal Over 3–Especially a Republican. She appears on Howie Carr’s Boston talk show once a week and I personally heard her say on more than one occasion that it was time for the Tea Party to stop running primary opponents against RINO Republicans. She was trying to have it both ways…
Elizabeth Warren endorses Bernie Sanders’ Wall Street plan
Elizabeth Warren has not endorsed a candidate in the Democratic primary as of yet but today she did give what amounts to an endorsement of Bernie Sanders’ Wall Street plan. Here is more:
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the nation’s strongest proponents of financial reform, praised Bernie Sanders’ plan to hold Wall Street accountable Wednesday in a move that could rally support for his struggling presidential campaign.
“I’m glad @BernieSanders is out there fighting to hold big banks accountable, make our economy safer, & stop the GOP from rigging the system,” Warren tweeted of Sanders’ Wall Street plan, which he announced in a speech in New York City Tuesday. She also wrote: “11 big banks are still so risky that if any one started to fail, they’d need a gov bailout or risk taking down the economy — again,” and then added in a series of tweets supporting Sanders, “We need to level the playing field and end too big to fail.”
While the national polls continue to show Donald Trump with a big lead over all of his Republican rivals Ted Cruz has been making some headway where it really counts–in the state polls. Last month an Iowa poll showed Ted Cruz with a ten point lead on Donald Trump and now a new California poll shows Ted Cruz surging. He is now two points ahead of Donald Trump, which amounts to a statistical tie.
Here is more:
Ted Cruz has surged to a statistical tie with Donald Trump among Republicans in California, while Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina have tumbled in this late-voting state, according to a new poll.
The Field Poll, released Tuesday, reflects Cruz’s momentum nationally in the crowded Republican presidential field.
Cruz, a favorite of evangelicals and tea party conservatives, is the first choice of 25 percent of likely Republican voters in California, according to the poll. Trump stands at 23 percent, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is running third at 13 percent. The difference between Cruz’s and Trump’s numbers is within the poll’s margin of error.
Barack Obama’s Executive Action on gun control allows doctors to report patients to the FBI without consent
Earlier today Barack Obama announced his long-awaited Executive Actions on gun control and as expected they included an expansion of background checks. It is hard argue that there should be no background checks but the dirty little secret is that most purchases already were subjected to background checks. However also included in his Executive Actions was something that I find troubling indeed.
According to this article doctors can now report patients to the FBI without their knowledge or consent. Here is more:
Having just recently capitulating on Barack Obama’s agenda by teaming up with the Democrats to pass a spending bill which funds all of the President’s agenda Paul Ryan has now come out swinging against Barack Obama’s proposed Executive Actions on gun control.
Here is more:
“We should also better enforce the laws we have on the books now to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals. Instead, the president is again targeting law-abiding citizens, intruding further into innocent Americans’ lives. At a time when the country wants the president to lead the fight against radical Islamic terror, this is yet another attempt to divide and distract from his failed policies,” Ryan said in a statement.
“Ever since he was a candidate, President Obama’s dismissiveness toward Americans who value the Second Amendment has been well-documented,” said Ryan. “He acts as if the right to bear arms is something to be tolerated, when in truth – as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2008 – it is fundamental. The same goes for the Constitution and its limits on executive power.
“We all are pained by the recent atrocities in our country, but no change the president is reportedly considering would have prevented them. We have seen consistently that an underlying cause of these attacks has been mental illness, and we should look at ways to address this problem,” Ryan said.
“While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will. His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected,” he said.
“No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally. The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights – all of them. This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it,” Ryan added.
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