PrairiePundit

Chriss Street: The nonpartisan OpenSecrets website that tracks political spending revealed that Wall Street Democrats crushed Main Street Republicans in 2018 midterm fundraising by $385.4 million. Final campaign filing reports demonstrate that 1,435,474, or about only 1 out of every 221 of America's 321,418,820 residents, made a reportable contribution of $200 or more to a candidate or political action committee in the 2017-2018 federal election cycle. But this tiny 0.45-percent sliver of the American population accounted for $3,825.3 billion, or 71.1 percent of the $5.2 billion in 2017-2018 reportable contributions. Democrats also beat Republicans in the number of total contributors to their candidates and in every other major category of fat-cat giving. The concept of individual donors giving to both parties is essentially dead, with only 7,349 donors nationwide giving at least 33 percent of their contributions to candidates from both parties. That works out to about 1 ...

AFP: Nigeria said Sunday it had carried out air strikes in the northeast of the country to repel an attack by Boko Haram and had killed a "large number" of the Islamist extremists. The air raids came as Nigeria and its neighbours prepared to launch a new multinational force to combat Boko Haram, in the face of the group's escalating violence in the region. The Nigerian Air Force said it had "successfully repelled an attack on Bita village by the Boko Haram terrorist group" in a combined operation with ground troops after spotting militants planning an assault. "Consequently, a large number of the insurgents were killed and several others were injured," it said in a statement, without disclosing when the incident took place. Boko Haram has staged a string of strikes -- often by female bombers -- targeting markets in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon that have killed and wounded scores in the past month. ... It will be interesting to see whether Nigeria is c...

It is interesting to see the Germans showing more leadership than the Obama administration which has been running a Twitter hashtag campain against Boko Haram.

Reuters: Suspected Boko Haram Islamist fighters from Nigeria kidnapped around 80 people, many of them children, and killed three others on Sunday in a cross-border attack on villages in northern Cameroon, army and government officials said. The group, which has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds in its bid to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has also targeted Cameroon and Niger over the past year as it seeks to expand its zone of operations. Sunday's kidnappings, among the largest abductions on Cameroonian soil, came as neighbouring Chad deployed troops to support Cameroon's forces in the area. "According to our initial information, around 30 adults, most of them herders, and 50 young girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 years were abducted," a senior army officer deployed to northern Cameroon told Reuters. He said the early-morning attack had targeted the village of Mabass and other villages along the porous border. Soldiers intervened and exch...

AFP: Dozens of Chadian tanks headed out of the capital Friday south towards Cameroon to help fight Nigeria's dreaded Boko Haram insurgents. It is rumoured to be eventually heading to Baga, the town on the shores of Lake Chad were as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the militants in a raid on January 7 described by US Secretary of State John Kerry as a "crime against humanity".The convoy, seen by an AFP journalist, roared out of the city after Chad's parliament voted to send armed forces to Cameroon and Nigeria to fight against the Islamists. Cameroon's President Paul Biya had announced Thursday that his Chadian counterpart Idriss Deby had agreed to send "a substantial contingent" of troops to help Cameroonian armed forces, who have faced repeated attacks from Boko Haram. The Russian ambassador to the country also pledged to supply Cameroon with more modern weapons to combat the extremists. The deployment came as the head of the west African ECOWA...

Wall Street Journal: A five-hour gunbattle between Boko Haram and soldiers in Cameroon sent thousands fleeing in this West African country that has become the Islamist insurgency’s second front. The battle erupted early Monday in the northern city of Kolofata, just across a mountainous border from Boko Haram’s heartland in Nigeria, government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary said. The militants, carrying heavy machine guns and Motorola two-way radios, sneaked in under the cover of fog, he added. The fighting killed 143 members of Boko Haram but only one soldier from the antiterrorism battalion, he said, but it wasn’t possible to confirm that toll. A clearer indication of the carnage came from the thousands of residents who military officials and witnesses said had fled Kolofata before soldiers secured control. “Only very old people are now in Kolofata,” said Oumarou Garba, a grocery owner who fled 15 miles on foot and motorbike to the town of Mora. “We see Boko Haram determined...