PrairiePundit

The media has lost its ability to control the narrative when it comes to Cruz who sees most of those in the media as just Democrats with an agenda.

ARA News: Subsequent to fierce clashes with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, at least 20 militant fighters from the Islamic State (ISIS) were killed and more than 25 others were wounded near Mosul city in Iraq’s northwestern province of Nineveh, the Peshmerga said in a statement on Saturday. “Daesh terrorists attacked our (Peshmerga) headquarters in Makhmur district southeast of Mosul, using car bombs and mortar shells,” the Kurdish leadership said in a statement, using another acronym for ISIS. “But our forces repelled the attack subsequent to fierce clashes,” it added. “At least 20 terrorists were killed and 28 more wounded in the clashes, before the group withdrew from the area towards its strongholds in Mosul.” The Kurdish Peshmerga troops were able to repel the ISIS attack with support from the U.S.-led coalition’s warplanes. ... This appears to be a platoon size raiding force that used VBIED's and mortars in an attempt to clear a breach of the defensive line.  The c...

Telegraph: Hedge funds and private equity groups armed with $60bn of ready cash are ready to snap up the assets of bankrupt US shale drillers, almost guaranteeing that America’s tight oil production will rebound once prices start to recover. Daniel Yergin, founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said it is impossible for OPEC to knock out the US shale industry though a war of attrition even if it wants to, and even if large numbers of frackers fall by the wayside over coming months. Mr Yergin said groups with deep pockets such as Blackstone and Carlyle will take over the infrastructure when the distressed assets are cheap enough, and bide their time until the oil cycle turns. “The management may change and the companies may change but the resources will still be there,” he told the Daily Telegraph. The great unknown is how quickly the industry can revive once the global glut starts to clear - perhaps in the second half of the year - but it will clearly be much faster tha...

Latin America Herald-Tribune: Venezuela Loses Voting Rights in United Nations as Dues Go Unpaid The socialists have run out of money and run out of time.  Their attempt to repeal the laws of supply and demand have backfired spectacularly.  Bernie Sanders is being discredited with every failure of the socialist regime.  Donald Trump should also take note at the failure of so-called "fair trade" policies instead of free trade.

Many in the media think this is a mistake, but seriously, do they really think New York is in play in this election?  Cruz is using Trump's own words where he says his values are different from those in Iowa.  He clearly does not see kowtowing to the New York media as a road to victory.

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: ... Russia, which relies on oil and natural gas for almost half its fiscal revenue, ran a budget deficit of 2.6 percent in 2015, the highest in five years. It’s now at risk of topping that level as prices drop even further, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned the government. This year’s budget was initially planned around oil averaging $50 a barrel and a deficit of 3 percent of gross domestic product. Belt-tightening measures totaling 1.5 trillion rubles ($18.9 billion) are needed to avoid a shortfall of over 6 percent of output this year, Siluanov said. While consumers were the main drivers of Russia’s economy for more than a decade, soft domestic demand has now become a primary hindrance to growth. As cheap oil weakens the Russian economy, it also causes its national currency, the ruble, to depreciate. That means Russian consumers have to shell out more rubles if they want to maintain their consumption levels. Geopolitical tensions have added to the ...

IBS Editorial: Democrats like to portray Republicans as out of touch. But a new poll shows that it’s Democrats who are fixated on issues the public could hardly care less about, and who are too trusting of government. The poll, taken by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research , asked people an open ended question: “Which problems would you like the government to be working on in the year 2016?” Based ON the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and their debates so far, you’d think the answers would be things like income inequality, “taking on” Wall Street, gun control, criminal justice reform, climate change and gay rights. For most people, these issues aren’t priorities at all. Just 8% of those surveyed listed income inequality as a problem the government should be working on; 4% said Wall Street regulation; 15% listed gun issues; 18% said climate change; and 7% minimum wage. Gay rights, women’s rights and special interest money in politics each scor...

Telegraph: Isil sets up secret training camps in Europe and is plotting 'special forces-style' attacks The terrorist group is planning more mass strikes that are similar to the Mumbai attacks in 2008, a comprehensive report from Europol warns At least, they are now recognizing that the Paris attacks were a copy of the Mumbai al Qaeda attacks.  For a long time, most of the media had been describing them as unprecedented.   The best way to stop the of attacks is to use adequate force to destroy the ISIL caliphate and take away its real estate where it trains and plans for these operations.  So far there has been a lack of will in Europe and the US to do that, and the result will be more mass murders of noncombatants.

Washington Times: Obamacare enrollment is lagging far behind what economists had projected, the Congressional Budget Office said in a new report that cuts the total number of customers expected to buy plans on the exchanges from 21 million down to just 12 million this year. Of those, 11 million will be getting government subsidies — down from the 15 million the CBO had projected just a year ago. The updated projections came as part of the CBO’s 2016 budget outlook, and confirm the administration’s own dim estimates of how many people would take advantage of the health exchanges, which are at the heart of President Obama’s health law. ... What this demonstrates is that with sufficient incentives you can bribe a few people into buying a flawed product like Obamacare.

Robert Brice: Biofuel is neither cheap nor green. Brice points out how ridiculous the biofuel boondoggle is when the military is paying ridiculous amounts for fuel when there is no threat that we are running out of conventional fuel.  He specifically targets the Navy's "green fleet" project.  If the Navy were really serious about finding an alternative fuel, it would not be made from cow fat.  What they should be looking at are the new processes used to extract hydrogen fuel from water.  If they could find a way to do that its ships would never run out of fuel.

The Hill: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Sunday published a video that indicates those behind the Paris massacre last year were using encryption to hide their communications. The 18-minute video, which was distributed via various ISIS official social media channels, features statements from what is purportedly the nine ISIS members behind the Paris assault, which left 130 dead. They are shown beheading hostages sometime prior to the attacks. "The following are the final messages of the nine lions of the Caliphate, who were mobilized from their dens to bring an entire country — France — to her knees,” reads a written statement that opens the video. The opening images also “suggest that ISIS fighters were using the data encryption software PGP for secure communications,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which tracks ISIS’s online behavior. How the Paris attackers communicated in the lead-up to the Nov. 13 assault has been a hot topic fo...

Washington Times: Clinton rallies Planned Parenthood vote, fights all restrictions on abortions Clinton has become an abortion extremist.  Most grandparents I know seem to have a greater appreciation for life and how precious a child and their life can be.  I can't imagine not having any of my grandchildren.

As someone who has supported Perry in the past I am not surprised that he has gone to bat for Ted Cruz.

Erick Wemple: Real estate mogul Donald Trump is unafraid to use Twitter as a showcase for his ignorance about the media. Stupid tweets about failing news organizations and misfiring complaints about reporters failing to note popularity, though, are nothing compared to the laugher he leveled Saturday at Fox News star anchor Megyn Kelly: Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Based on @MegynKelly's conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate. 10:52 AM - 23 Jan 2016 2,844 2,844 Retweets 6,918 6,918 likes This absurdity presented Fox News with what we’ll call the crank dilemma: Respond to a dumb allegation and dignify it? Or ignore it and run the risk of appearing to hide from it? Neither option is a good one. In this case, Fox News opted for Door No. 1, and did so with panache: “Megyn Kelly has no conflict of interest. Donald Trump is just trying to build up the audience for Thursday’s debate, for which we thank him.” ... Wemple also d...

NY Times: Donald Trump Hears a Lesson in Humility at Church Mr. Trump attended a church service in Iowa on Sunday and later told people at a rally that “we talked about humility in church today.” Judging by his campaign speeches and his interviews, humility is not a word normally used to describe Mr. Trump.

Steve Berman: George Will’s Prophecy Came True: To Hell With The ‘Boneless Wonders’ ... Will’s stunning prose in September 2015 is absolutely prophetic in defining both Trump and the GOP . Donald Trump, whose promises are probably as malleable as his principles, promises to support the Republican nominee. Some of his rivals for the nomination, disoriented by their fear and envy of him, are making the GOP seem like the party of boneless wonders. mal·lea·ble : (2) (a) capable of being altered or controlled by outside forces or influences On immigration, Trump talks about building a wall and deporting 12 million illegals, then letting them all back in. And this isn’t amnesty? From “ 60 Minutes “.... ... In otherwords his promise on immigration is a very expensive illusory one.

Byron York: ... In one of my first conversations at the Radisson, with two Republican activists, I asked a simple what's-up question about Trump. Both immediately responded in exactly the same way: "I don't know anybody who supports him." They're politically active and aware, but they said they have no contact in their daily lives with even a single person who supports their party's front-runner. After that conversation, I began to ask everyone I met: Do you know anyone who supports Donald Trump? In more cases than not — actually, in nearly all the cases — the answer was no. I asked one woman Friday night, and she said she hadn't thought about it. I ran into her the next morning at breakfast, and she said, "That was a good question you asked me last night, and I've given it some thought." And no, she didn't know any Trump supporters. Given Trump's big lead in the polls, if so many politically active Republicans don't know e...

Ben Shapiro: ... And nobody is more motivated than the Ted Cruz crowd. Trump’s support comes from heretofore alienated subgroups, many of whom haven’t voted before. They have no history of high voter turnout. Cruz’s support comes from the traditional base in Iowa: Evangelicals and conservatives. Cruz has support from Evangelical pastors in every single Iowa precinct. He’s done the ground work. Trump hasn’t. Beyond that, Trump has the highest negatives of any candidate in Iowa outside of Jeb Bush – he’s at 54 percent positive and 45 percent negative. Cruz, by contrast, has the highest positives: 76 percent to 19 percent. This means that Cruz is everybody’s second pick – so as the field narrows, Cruz should gain. In short, Donald Trump must turn out every Donald Trump backer to beat Cruz. Cruz must only turn out a solid segment of his base, and then hope that the other candidates who have been flagging down the stretch continue to do so, with their voters bleeding over to him. The...

Michael Barone: How stupid and vicious do they think we are? That's a question that I think explains a lot of things about politics and society today — and about this year's unpredictable presidential race. The "us" in that question are ordinary citizens and the "they" are political and media elites who hold them in contempt. Which they do over and over again by trying to obfuscate and cover up the source and motives of terrorist attacks. Barack Obama, who refuses to use phrases akin to "Islamist terrorism," is a prime offender, but far from the only one. His predecessor George W. Bush, after the attacks of September 11, made a point of visiting mosques and calling Islam a religion of peace. Undoubtedly he then feared that many Americans would attack and assault Muslims, real or perceived, and a very few such attacks occurred. But government statistics count far fewer "hate crimes" against Muslims than against Jews. Nonetheless ...

Moe Lane: Bernie Sanders’ socialized medicine would sock it to working seniors. It si an additional 8.4 tax increase for those who are already eligible for medicare and are still working.