Democrats’ Caucus-Chaos: Party Switched Iowa Delegate from Sanders to Clinton

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by JOHN HAYWARD5 Feb 2016370

Iowa’s Des Moines Register is calling for a full audit of the Clinton vs. Sanders caucus count, and now theUK Guardian explains how the state’s Democrat Party bypassed the computer system to give at least one Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delegate to Hillary Clinton, without even notifying the precinct chair.

In Grinnell Ward 1, the precinct where elite liberal arts college Grinnell College is located, 19 delegates were awarded to Bernie Sanders and seven were awarded to Hillary Clinton on caucus night.

However, the Iowa Democratic party decided to shift one delegate from Sanders to Clinton on the night and did not notify precinct chair J Pablo Silva that they had done so. Silva only discovered that this happened the next day, when checking the precinct results in other parts of the county.

The shift of one delegate at a county convention level would not have significantly affected the ultimate outcome of the caucus, but rather, it raises questions about the Iowa Democratic party’s management of caucus night.

Silva spoke with the Guardian and stressed that the issue was one of “confusion over party rules in an anomalous situation,” not underhanded delegate-stealing tactics.

However, it clearly was a unilateral action by the state party, and they ended up apologizing to the precinct chair for it:

The precinct, which is the largest in the state had 925 caucus-goers and the Iowa Democratic party’s formula for apportioning delegates was not capable of fully dealing with circumstances in such a large precinct, he said. This meant that when people left the course of the caucus process, the algorithm wasn’t capable of dealing with the shift in delegates.

As Silva explained it, the Iowa Democratic party’s formula for apportioning delegates left no method of dealing with one delegate in the precinct. Silva had anticipated this and sought clarification from a party staffer and laid out what seemed to be the correct method. When results were reported to the central reporting center in Des Moines, party staffers, who were able to adjust numbers reported in the much vaunted Microsoft app used by the Iowa Democratic party before they were released to the public, unilaterally made changes. And, as Silva noted: “They did it indirectly in my opinion.”

While Silva was grateful that he wasn’t called in the middle of the night about any issue, he was “kind of surprised” to see a result different than what he had reported the next day. Eventually, after lobbying both by Silva and former county chair Don Smith, they have received assurances that the delegate numbers for that precinct will be corrected. Smith explicitly told the Guardian that Iowa Democratic party executive director Ben Foecke had apologized to him over the unilateral action.

The Sanders campaign has come up a bit short of alleging foul play, but it has suggested human-error cost Sanders a razor-thin victory in the state, and has called for the raw vote totals to be released.

As of Friday afternoon, the Iowa state party gave no indication it would release the vote totals, or perform the audit demanded by the Des Moines Register.

The wheel is likely to turn on this story after the New Hampshire primary, as it will on the Republicans’ more prosaic Iowa controversy.  Complaining about Iowa results after New Hampshire is usually a net minus for candidates, no matter the nature of the complaint.  It will be interesting to see if any changes are made for the 2020 caucuses, as the GOP made improvements after a messy operation in 2012.

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Mickey Kaus: Marco Rubio Hides Pro-Donor Amnesty Behind Anti-ISIS Bluster

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by BREITBART NEWS5 Feb 201622

The original news-blogger, journalist Mickey Kaus, flew out from Los Angeles to New Hampshire to watch Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’s hide-the-amnesty script, and he’s so worried that he wrote up a new post, “The Rubio Menace.”

I went to see Marco Rubio’s town hall this afternoon in Salem, New Hampshire. It was only a few miles from my hotel–I really had no excuse. I wanted to find out: Was Rubio really as slick and insubstantial  in this setting as John Edwards? Answer: No. He’s slicker. He’s slicker, in part, because he at least seems a bit spontaneous,** with a slightly goofy, human quality. I admit this is hard to judge seeing him once — maybe he always lets his 8-year-old son sit on his stool during his stump speech. But it’s hard to deny the appeal.

When it comes to substance, Rubio draws on an inventory of well-prepared rhetorical modules, with just enough policy to sound sophisticated, that can be inserted where necessary to handle, say, the how-would-you-handle-ISIS question (Sunni ground army!) or disability benefits (get rid of phony claims!). There’s not much sacrifice involved in any of Rubio’s proposals — even avoiding budget apocalypse, which he claims to be very concerned about, is just a matter of raising the retirement age and slowing benefit hikes for the well-off.  Nothing that hasn’t been floating around Washington for years. There’s a heavy emphasis on electability. Big, difficult questions (like robots taking everyone’s jobs) are ignored. Tellingly, however, Rubio has added a Trump Module, where he alludes to anger at stagnant wages.

He’s got an immigration module too. It ignores Rubio’s “Gang of 8” amnesty push while adopting what seems to be an Enforcement First framework, in which “nothing” happens, amnesty-wise, until the border is “secure.” Everything depends on what “nothing” and “secure” mean, of course. But those crucial seams are effectively buried. Rubio prefaces all this with a digression on ISIS, and how it’s changed the immigration debate: Because our top priority has to be to “keep ISIS out of this country.” It’s an absurd, transparent attempt to put off confronting the Gang of 8 and the effects of a low-skilled influx on living standards. But the audience loves it. The ISIS digression gets the biggest applause of the day…

Kaus is a Democrat and a classical, old-style liberal, who shrugs off sneers from his former progressive allies. He’s not worked-up about taxes or regulations, but is frightened by the ability of progressives and Wall Street to destroy the wages, independence, pride, and status of ordinary Americans by flooding the labor market with wage-cutting, welfare-supported, profit-boosting foreign labor. Throughout 2013 and 2014, Kaus helped lead the fight against Rubio’s amnesty-and-cheap-labor “comprehensive immigration reform” bill, and he’s still frightened that progressives and business donors, plus their lobbyists on K Street in Washington D.C., will derail the populist, pro-American movement led bySen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Donald Trump. The new-and-improved Rubio, he says, is:

…mildly terrifying. If Rubio’s a ‘robot,’ as many have charged, he’s a sophisticated new model robot with simulated humanistic elements and a charm algorithm … In short, for the Sessions movement–and a particular vision of America, in which even unskilled, non-bright citizens can work a full day and earn a respectable living–Marco Rubio is a state-of-the art K-Street kill shot, a sudden existential threat. We may have only a few days to recognize this.

Read the whole article here.

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Donald Trump: ‘I Am a Unifier’ for a Fractured Nation

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by ALEX SWOYER5 Feb 2016Washington, DC244

Donald Trump said that he is a “unifier” who will bring the fractured nation together.

“I bring people together,” Trump stated. “I am a unifier … You will see our country is going to come together,” he vowed.

Trump suggested that President Barack Obama is a divider, adding that right now in the country, “Everybody hates everybody.”

The GOP frontrunner spoke at a campaign rally in Florence, South Carolina on Friday night. “It’s a movement,” Trump said about attendance at his large rallies. He said his supporters can take the country back, adding “We’re going to run our country intelligently.”

Trump referred to politicians as “blood suckers” who take money from donors and special interests. He said he is the only candidate on the Democrat or Republican side who is self-funding his own campaign.

Trump talked about the incoming migrants from the Middle East, saying it could be a “Trojan horse” for terrorism, because the refugees cannot be vetted properly. He also said Christianity is under siege and stressed the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

Trump focused on his ability to make great deals for the country, said that “not the right people [are] negotiating our deals.”

He said the Second Amendment is “vital to protect.” He touched on illegal immigration, promising, “We’re going to have strong borders again. We’re going to have the wall.”

Trump referenced the recent Iowa caucus where he placed second to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). “I think we did great. The people of Iowa are tremendous,” Trump said. “I think we should have come in first … a lot of things happened there,” he added, referencing the controversy between Dr. Ben Carson and the Cruz campaign telling caucus goers that Carson was “suspending campaigning” ahead of the votes.

“Isn’t it funny, I came in a strong, strong second. Third was quite a distance away,” Trump said of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who placed third, losing to Trump by roughly 2,000 votes.

“I think I came in first, I’ll be honest,” Trump said about coming in second in Iowa, “But honestly it doesn’t matter. We got a lot of delegates.”

Trump said this week he is focused on New Hampshire, and then next week he will focus on South Carolina.

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Phyllis Schlafly Issues Rubio Betrayal Memo

Image courtesy of Phyllis Schlafly

by JULIA HAHN5 Feb 2016Washington D.C.2,613

Conservative icon and grassroots heroine Phyllis Schlafly has released a new report extensively detailingSen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’s efforts to deceive the American people in his determined pursuit to open the nation’s borders.

Schlafly’s 15-page report on Rubio’s“betrayal” provides hyperlinked sources to document Rubio’s “big con.”

Schlafly’s memo warns the American people that Rubio’s push to deliver globalist immigration policies for his donors is not finished. “There is likely no person in the United States of America in a better position to enact mass immigration legislation than a President Rubio — no one who could deliver more votes in both parties for open borders immigration,” the memo states. “Senator Rubio is not Main Street’s Obama, he is Wall Street’s Obama: President Obama was a hardcore leftist running as a centrist; Senator Rubio is a Wall Street globalist running as a tea party conservative.”

The report is broken up into more than a dozen subsections, including “LYING TO CONSERVATIVE MEDIA,” in which Schlafly details how Rubio made countless false promises to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, National Review, and others. “Rubio traded shamelessly on the affection and trust conservatives had placed in him,” the memo states. “His deceptions about his immigration bill rivaled and exceeded Obama’s claims about disastrous Obamacare.”

Although in recent months, many of National Review’s writers have sought to boost Rubio’s candidacy, the memo later notes that “National Review has never received an apology for being repeatedly lied to by Rubio.” The memo reports, “To this day, Rubio has not only never retracted one of his false statements — never admitted any wrongdoing — but never even apologized to those he deceived, and their millions of listeners. Instead, he is raising more money and telling the same lies all over again, as he continues his push for mass amnesty and mass immigration.”

Another subsection of the memo entitled “AMERICAN WORKERS CAN’T CUT IT”states: 

In a for-attribution interview with Ryan Lizza, two senior Rubio staffers expressed frustration that they couldn’t get even more foreign workers crammed into the bill for their boss.  They explained:

‘There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it.’

Rubio’s spokesman — now his campaign spokesman — also compared opponents of amnesty to slaveholders. More on that here.

The memo also documents the back-room deals involved in the bill. A subsection entitled, “IMMIGRATION-FOR-PROFIT”reports that “Rubio’s lawyer, who wrote the bill, also enriched his clients through it.”

The “REFUGEES” subsection notes: “Rubio’s bill included language giving the President unprecedented power to expand refugee resettlement.“ 

The “FIANCÉ VISAS” subsection points out that “Rubio’s bill opened the floodgates for fiancé visas — and fiancé children — an unprecedented security risk and another handout to the foreign immigration lobby.”

In a subsection titled, “DECEIVING LAW ENFORCEMENT,” the memo states:

Revealing Rubio’s character, it is also worth recalling that during his introduction press conference, Rubio stood frozen like a statue as ICE officer, council President, and former Marine Chris Crane was removed from the room for trying to ask a question. Shameful. Crane would later testify: ‘Never have I seen such contempt for law enforcement as I’ve seen from the Gang of Eight.’

In a section entitled, “BACK TO HIS OLD WAYS,” the memo notes that “Rubio is also the only candidate in the race still advocating citizenship for all illegal immigrants, and all that necessarily entails in terms of fiscal costs and chain migration.  (Jeb’s book did not call for universal citizenship, as Rubio does.) To this day, Rubio has not backed off a single policy in the Gang of Eight bill (see more here).”

The conclusion of Schlafly’s memo is posted here in full:

There is no single major distinguishing policy difference between Marco Rubio, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). They have the same trade policy, immigration policy and foreign policy.  But on immigration most especially — the issue in which all four have invested the most — there is no daylight separating them.

The difference, then, is one of persona, not policy.  And in the arena of immigration, this translates into a vital difference.  The biggest change from McCain-Kennedy, which could not get out of the Senate, and the Gang of Eight — which was nursed along by conservative pundits despite being to the left of Kennedy’s bill — was the presence of Rubio.  Rubio created the conditions necessary to produce a considerably more open borders bill: conservatives who were invested in the Rubio Brand provided no early pushback but accepted Kennedy’s old talking points, and Rubio gave red state Democrats the political space necessary to support it.  This is how it got 68 votes in the Senate.

The stakes of course are raised considerably if Rubio is President or Vice President. Rubio would have a much, much better chance than Obama of getting an open borders bill through Congress — while Boehner could refuse to bring up Obama’s mass immigration/amnesty bill for vote in 2014, Ryan would never refuse Rubio’s bill.  Rubio’s presence, as it did with the Gang of Eight, would create the cover for both certain Republicans and all Democrats to get behind a far more open borders plan.  Given that nearly every House Democrat sponsored the Gang of Eight House version (including Pelosi and Gutierrez), Ryan would not need to gather that many additional votes (House GOP leaders might have refused Obama’s 2014 request for a vote but they would not refuse President Rubio’s).

All of which adds up to: there is likely no person in the United States of America in a better position to enact mass immigration legislation than a President Rubio — no one who could deliver more votes in both parties for open borders immigration.  Senator Rubio is not Main Street’s Obama, he is Wall Street’s Obama: President Obama was a hardcore leftist running as centrist; Senator Rubio is a Wall Street globalist running as a tea party conservative.

Unlike other legislation, the effects of bad immigration policy cannot be repealed. They are forever. The Republican party would never nominate a pro-Obamacare candidate, and it must be an even stronger maxim that it should not nominate any candidate who is committed to a policy of mass immigration. Rubio wrote the Obamacare of immigration policies: a bill that would have eviscerated the middle class, plunged millions into poverty, legalized the most dangerous aliens on the planet, overwhelmed our schools and safety nets, and done irreversible violence to the idea of America as a nation-state. Rubio is the candidate of open borders, Obamatrade and mass immigration, making one last attempt to pull off one big con.

You can read the entire memo here.

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Revealed: Sanders Volunteered in Israel for Marxist Revolutionary Group

AP Photo/Chris Carlson

by AARON KLEIN5 Feb 201660

TEL AVIV – In the 1960s, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)volunteered at a kibbutz in northern Israel as the guest of a Marxist-socialist youth movement with a revolutionary mission, it was revealed on Thursday.

For months, Israeli reporters have been searching for the name of the kibbutz on which Sanders spent several months in 1963. The presidential candidate, who has not been shy about his affinity for socialism, was reluctant to disclose much about his Jewish upbringing or his time in Israel in 1963, where he traveled with his first wife, Deborah Shiling.

Sanders’ campaign has conspicuously refused to answer inquiries about the identity of the kibbutz.

On Thursday, Jerusalem Post Intelligence and Security columnist Yossi Melman revealed that Sanders volunteered the information about the kibbutz during an interview with the reporter in 1990, while Melman was the intelligence correspondent and analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

The 1990 interview, discovered in the Haaretz archive, cites Sanders saying that in 1963 he spent several months in Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim in northern Israel as a guest of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, which was affiliated with the kibbutz.

The information has garnered some news media attention from Israel-themed outlets. Yet not a single news report reviewed by Breitbart News mentioned that Hashomer Hatzair was an openly Marxist movement that sought to use Zionism as the first stage of a utopian plan for Israel. The second stage was to be a revolution to transform Israel into an Arab-Jewish socialist paradise.

Hashomer Hatzair is still around. It currently identifies as a progressive Zionist organization and is a member of the International Falcon Movement–Socialist Education International.

Hashomer Hatzair runs a youth program in the U.S. that says it “encourages youth to build progressive Jewish values, explore connections to Israel and the Jewish community, and develop a commitment to social, environmental, and economic justice.”

The organization, founded in Europe in 1913 to prepare young socialists for the move to Mandatory Palestine, has rebranded its mission numerous times. It once was a revolutionary Marxist organization.

Movement members first settled in Mandatory Palestine in 1919 and seven years later founded several kibbutzim as well as a political party called the Socialist League of Palestine.

In a lengthy history for the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation, Hebrew University Political Science Professor and prolific author Shlomo Avineri in 1977 documentedthe Marxist revolutionary ideology of the Hashomer Hatzair movement.

In a 404-page work titled, “Varieties of Marxism,” Avineri recounted the Marxist “baptism” of Hashomer Hatzair, which he referred to as HH, in the 1920s as “one of the most exciting intellectual chapters in the modern history of Zionism and Palestine.”

He continued:

It bears testimony to the historical essentiality of Marxism in those years, which saw a new wave of Marxism that was to grow and intensify until it reached its political peak in the 1950s, whereupon it would disintegrate in face of political reality.

Unlike other pragmatic socialist movements at the time, Hashomer Hatzair “refused to accept constructivism as the main content of class war in the Palestinian reality, or to contend that socialism could be realized without revolution.”

Hashomer Hatzair saw Zionism, or support for a Jewish national homeland, as an entryway into the Jewish state in order to accomplish a socialist revolution in two phases.  It enumerated this mission by creating its own “Etapist Theory,” according to which “Jewish socialist society would be realized in two stages,” wrote Avineiri.

The historian elaborated:

In the first stage, the Jewish national home would be established in Eretz Israel, based on a productive and self-sufficient economic foundation. In the second stage, the social revolution itself would be accomplished.

The function of the Zionist movement and Zionist cooperation was limited to the first stage only; it would be terminated after the economic, cultural, and political foundations had been laid in Palestine, and after the national funds, based on national donations, were no longer required. Partnership with the Zionists was therefore considered only temporary.

The social revolution was to be realized, however, by the international organization of the workers, i.e. Jewish-Arab collaboration. This “theory of stages” formulated by Meir Yaari had many advantages for HH. It could continue to participate in the Zionist Organization, to build socialist cells within the framework of the existing regime, and, at the same time, to maintain revolutionary radicalism.”

While that radicalism may now be tempered, the group continues to maintain its socialist identity.

In 2008, Haaretz reported on the continuing efforts of Hashomer Hatzair to spread socialism in Israel and worldwide.

The newspaper reported on a world conference marking the movement’s 95th anniversary that attempted to update the organization’s basic tenets. Participants in the 2008 conference could not agree on which style of socialism to adopt. “While Latin American graduates favored classic socialism, the European delegates sided with democratic socialism,” reportedHaaretz.

The newspaper continued, quoting a delegate from Argentina:

According to Dana Merweiss, from Argentina, the way to implement socialism today is by education and creating communities with socialist awareness.

Levine said the movement in the past required its members to work within its community, but today “we say we should also work outside our community as part of the fulfillment of the principle of socialism. In Argentina we work in poor neighborhoods, Jewish and non-Jewish,” he said.

 Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

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GOP Primary Poll: Trump Widens National Lead

Associated Press

by JOHN NOLTE5 Feb 2016169

A Quinnipiac poll released Friday shows that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump still holds a national lead over his GOP rivals. Trump earns 31% support, a +9 point lead over second place Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (22%). Pulling into third is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) with 19%. Everyone else is at 6% and below. There is little love for the governors — Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Chris Christie — who are all tied up at 3%.

In this particular poll, since the middle of December, Trump has picked up +3 points. Cruz has lost -2 points.  Rubio has surged +7.  Ben Carson lost -4, dropping from 10% to just 6%. Christie lost half his support, dropping -3 points, from 6% to just 3%.

The good news for Trump is that he went from being just +4 points ahead of second place Cruz in December to now being +9 points up.

In the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Trump leads his GOP rivals by +12.5%.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC

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Citi: World economy trapped in ‘death spiral’

Katy Barnato | @KatyBarnato

49 Mins AgoCNBC.com

The global economy seems trapped in a "death spiral" that could lead to further weakness in oil prices, recession and a serious equity bear market, Citistrategists have warned.

Ivan Bliznetsov | Getty Images

Some analysts — including those at Citi — have turned bearish on the world economy this year, following an equity rout in January and weaker economic data out of China and the U.S.

"The world appears to be trapped in a circular reference death spiral," Citi strategists led by Jonathan Stubbs said in a report on Thursday.

"Stronger U.S. dollar, weaker oil/commodity prices, weaker world trade/petrodollar liquidity, weaker EM (and global growth)... and repeat. Ad infinitum, this would lead to Oilmageddon, a 'significant and synchronized' global recession and a proper modern-day equity bear market."

Stubbs said that macro strategists at Citi forecast that the dollar would weaken in 2016 and that oil prices were likely bottoming, potentially providing some light at the end of the tunnel.

"The death spiral is in nobody's interest. Rational behavior, most likely, will prevail," he said in the report.

Crude oil prices have tumbled by around 70 percent since the middle of 2014, during which time the U.S. dollar has risen by around 20 percent against a basket of currencies.

The world economy grew by 3.1 percent in 2015 and is projected to accelerate to expand by 3.4 percent in 2016 and 3.6 percent in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund. The forecast reflects expectations of gradual improvement in countries currently in economic distress, notably Brazil, Russia and some in the Middle East.

By contrast, Citi forecasts the world economy will grow by only 2.7 percent in 2016 having cut its outlook last month.

World economy on edge of recession: Citi

Overall, advanced economies are mostly making a modest recovery, while many emerging market and developing economies are under strain from the rebalancing of the Chinese economy, lower commodity prices and capital outflows.

Stubbs added that policymakers would likely attempt to "regain credibility" in the coming weeks and months.

"This is fundamental to avoiding a proper/full global recession and dangerous disorder across financial markets. The stakes are high, perhaps higher than they have ever been in the post-World War II era," he said.

Just 151,000 new jobs were created in January in the U.S., in the latest sign that the world's biggest economy is slowing. Economists are concerned about an industrial or manufacturing recession in the country, following some warnings from companies in earnings seasons and recent weak manufacturing activity and durable goods orders data.

However, some analysts say markets are overegging the prospect of a global slump.

"Many markets are now pricing in a significant probability of recession and when we talk about recession, we're talking particularly about a U.S. recession. Do you think that is likely or not? To me, the odds are too high; the market is pricing too high a probability," Myles Bradshaw, the head of global aggregate fixed income at Amundi, told CNBC this week.

Markets too hasty to call a recession: Analyst

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Katy BarnatoReporter and Copy Editor, CNBC.com