US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

One thing in particular sticks with me from the Sanders article-

:Sanders’ sticks with him: “He said, ‘Obama’s great, but he did one major thing wrong: He built up a huge grassroots organization to get him elected, and on the day he took office he said, ‘Thank you all very much. I’ll take it from here.’”

While I would argue that Obama did more than one thing wrong, but that was clearly a wrong turn.

Clinton was able to go to the people when his own Congress thwarted him, but maybe that's the difference between a narcissist and an extroverted approval seeker.  My impression of [Sleezebag] is that he's an egotistical autocrat.

Obama has done a lot more than one thing wrong, but that was certainly one of them.  I guess it's down to being green, or something; I don't think he's a narcissist, but isn't he currently holding his third elected office ever?

[Rusty Edge]

Uh... not sure. I think he went state senator/US congressman/US Senator/President , looking for the next job before making a name in the last one. I'll look into it....

You, sir are correct. He went straight from state senator to US Senator to President!
Rookie Jan 3, 1997 to President in Jan 20, 2009

Well, he's getting bashed enough this week for that no credible terrorist threat thing, I'll save my keystrokes for some other politician.

[Rusty Edge]

This article is interesting for it's graphic.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/experienced-gop-presidential-candidates-the-first-quit

With the exception of Kasich, who I've said would probably be the most effective president, the most experienced/ best qualified candidates have dropped out . He's struggling with a 30 day polling average of 2.05%

It's still 2 positions below the unqualified Fiorina at 2.48%

[Rusty Edge]

Well, there was another GOP debate tonight.

The qualifiers were- [Sleezebag], Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Christy, Bush, and Kasich. They opened with attacks upon Hillary, made a few jokes, but I don't know that they differentiated themselves. Discussions of comparative tax plans led to my discovery of this website, which allows you to compare candidates' proposals on various tax types.

http://taxfoundation.org/comparing-2016-presidential-tax-reform-proposals

[vonbach]

The Bernie revolution: He’s not going anywhere

Thats the issue really isn't it? He's not going anywhere is right. His campaign strategy seems to be to  wait
for the Hillary campaign to implode so he can step in. It does looks like Hillary is going to implode sooner rather than later.

Obama has done a lot more than one thing wrong, but that was certainly one of them.

Obama has done some things correctly. He's the best gun salesman in US history for one.
Also he's pretty much gotten [Sleezebag] elected already.

[Unorthodox]

Well, there was another GOP debate tonight.

The qualifiers were- [Sleezebag], Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Christy, Bush, and Kasich. They opened with attacks upon Hillary, made a few jokes, but I don't know that they differentiated themselves. Discussions of comparative tax plans led to my discovery of this website, which allows you to compare candidates' proposals on various tax types.

http://taxfoundation.org/comparing-2016-presidential-tax-reform-proposals

Thank you for that. 

I'm no financial expert, (and have paid no attention to anything election related to date) but according to that chart, [Sleezebag]'s plan looks like he's trying to close deduction loopholes, but lowering the overall tax rate, and providing a large break for "investments". 

I suppose the idea is a kind of voluntary stimulus for those with $$$ and corporations to either pay through the nose or put money back into the economy.  Whether his closing of deduction loopholes is enough to offset the overall deduction he's giving to the rich, or whether "Investment" is just another glaring loophole or will really stimulate the economy is beyond my comprehension. 

Sanders' 65% estate tax jumps out at me as bordering on ludicrous. 

Everyone else looks like rather minor changes to the existing system.  Except Rand Paul's flat tax.  I like the idea of a flat tax, myself, but don't see myself being able to back the guy. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Time to take Sanders seriously
Matt Bai  National Political Columnist  January 14, 2016



Some polls have Bernie Sanders overtaking Hillary Clinton in Iowa and opening up a double-digit lead in New Hampshire. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)



After I wrote about the twisted codependency of Donald [Sleezebag] and the media a few weeks back, some readers got in touch to complain that the attention paid to [Sleezebag] had all but obscured the rise of Bernie Sanders. In an interview with CNN that week, Sanders himself made the same point, referring to a report that claimed network news shows had devoted 234 minutes to [Sleezebag] and only 10 to his campaign. (Yes, 10 – for the entire year.)

Judging from what’s happening right now in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders and his avid supporters have a legitimate point.

Just as the Democratic primaries were the dominant story in the 2008 cycle, so has the Republican train wreck proved to be the most compelling storyline this year. But with less than three weeks to go before the voting starts, Sanders may be just as plausible a nominee as [Sleezebag].

A New York Times/CBS News poll this week showed Sanders, who trailed Hillary Clinton among Democrats by 20 points a month ago, closing that gap to 7. But national polls are essentially meaningless; what’s more impressive are polls that have Sanders  overtaking Clinton  in Iowa and opening up a double-digit lead in New Hampshire.

It’s hard to know exactly what we’re looking at here. Is Sanders making a last, spirited stand before reality crashes down on him? Or is this the year when the molecular structure of our politics — on both sides — is about to be smashed apart and scrambled?

History would certainly suggest the former — that Sanders is only the latest in a long line of leftist insurgents, popular with college kids and urban idealists, who shake the party’s establishment without ever really threatening to topple it. The most obvious comparison is to Howard Dean, who by the end of 2003 was dominating the cycle in terms of both polling and money, and who went on to win a single primary — in his own tiny state.

Maybe an even better analogue would be the 2000 Democratic campaign, which was the first one I covered. The entire party establishment then was lined up behind the sitting vice president, Al Gore, but by the end of 1999, the former senator Bill Bradley was still running strong. Much like Sanders, Bradley ran against the legacy of Clintonian calculation, disparaging the incrementalism of the ’90s.

Bradley endured a withering assault from Gore and the party’s leaders, then got whacked in Iowa and edged out in New Hampshire. From that moment on, he was a dead candidate walking.

Clinton is as flawed a candidate as Gore was, and not terribly trusted by the electorate; I’ve never assumed she was a lock for the nomination in the way a lot of my colleagues did. But in Sanders (in contrast to a younger governor like Martin O’Malley, whose campaign has foundered), she drew a chief competitor who’s 74, socialist and scolding. You could argue that no establishment candidate in the last 40 years has gotten luckier than that.

And yet we can all get too hung up on history, and there are reasons to think that the Democratic primaries in 2016 might not be a replay of years past.

In 2000, the antiestablishment current in public life had just begun to assert itself (among the outsiders who threatened to run that year was [Sleezebag] himself), and the Internet was a crude new tool for organizing and raising money.

Now, of course, the attitudes of most voters toward their own party leaders range somewhere between indifferent and contemptuous, and small-dollar fundraising online has obliterated whatever structural advantage an anointed candidate once enjoyed. Sanders raised $73 million in 2015 — about $40 million less than Clinton, but more than enough to run a competitive national campaign.

Clinton, meanwhile, continues to run a strangely remote and impersonal campaign, the political equivalent of a drone operated out of some desert trailer. Everything seems carefully selected for minimal engagement — the orchestrated town halls, the carefully navigated TV interviews, the occasional think-tank speeches.

Clinton’s campaign has policies — just this week, feeling the pressure, she highlighted a series of sober and eminently sensible proposals for making the wealthy pay more taxes — but no discernible argument or soul. If she had a candid slogan, it would be: “Let’s just get there, and I’ll know what to do.”

Only recently has Clinton even seen fit to really acknowledge her chief opponent,  going after Sanders for his record of supporting the gun industry. For most of the campaign, she has treated him more like the doddering uncle one must respect even as his dinner-table tirades grow tiresome.

That’s a dangerous way to run against a tireless, plainspoken populist, at a moment when voters, for better or worse, yearn to feel some emotional connection to their politicians. Of all the attitudes a candidate might project right now, exasperation and entitlement are two of the least helpful.

Most significantly, though, the country is in a vastly different place, economically and psychically, than we were when Gore plowed his way through to the nomination that was assumed to be his.

Consider the way Bill Clinton began his final State of the Union address at this time in 2000: “Never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats.” He went on to reel off a series of statistics that were to be the basis of his legacy — crime down by 20 percent, teen births down for seven straight years, welfare rolls cut in half.

That wasn’t anything like the tone of Obama’s final address this week, 15 years after Sept. 11 and eight years after the collapse of Wall Street. “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” he said, in a speech that seemed almost plaintive at times. “What is true — and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious — is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before the Great Recession hit and haven’t let up.”

As the heir to the previous administration, Clinton isn’t running with the kind of gusting tailwind that propelled Gore forward in 2000, and that may be the most salient fact of her existence this year.

You’d have to conclude that Sanders has at least an even chance of winning one of the first two states, and decent odds of winning both.

And if so, what happens then?

Even winning both Iowa and New Hampshire wouldn’t make Sanders the likely nominee. The main reason Obama was able to surpass Clinton in the 2008 primaries, unlike other insurgents in the party’s modern history, is that he peeled off most of the black voters on whom the establishment candidate always relies. Sanders probably can’t, which is why Clinton would still have the edge in South Carolina and in a lot of big states that follow.

But if Clinton comes out of the first two contests badly weakened, establishment Democrats will find themselves in the same chaotic, panicked state they’ve been chortling about while watching the Republicans. There would be renewed calls, inevitably, for another late entry into the field — namely Joe Biden, who took an unexpected swipe at Clinton on income inequality this week.

For Clinton, what it would mean, mostly, is that she’d have to settle in for the  next installment of a tedious movie she hoped never to have to revisit: “The Long, Dark Slog Through Delegate Hell, Part II.”

All she could hope, in that event, is that it doesn’t end the same.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/time-to-take-sanders-seriously-1342599418519606.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Rubio and Christie battle for establishment lane
Jon Ward  January 15, 2016



For much of the night Thursday, the sixth Republican presidential primary debate was a split-screen competition, with two pairs of candidates fighting separate battles.

As Donald [Sleezebag] and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slugged it out for the top spot in the Republican presidential primary polls, the two men competing to represent the establishment wing engaged with each other.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hope to emerge as the champion of Republican voters who do not like Cruz and [Sleezebag].

In New Hampshire, for example, support in the polls for Rubio, Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich amounts to 42 percent. [Sleezebag] leads the pack, but with only 30 percent.

Each of the four hopes to be the one to break out of the pack and emerge as the alternative to [Sleezebag] and Cruz. So each has been taking shots at the others, but Rubio and Christie’s broadsides at each other have been particularly harsh.

Late in the debate, Cruz and Rubio clashed — as they did onstage last month — on immigration. But the fight that matters most to Rubio now is with Christie, and it will likely get more intense as the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary approach.

Debate moderator Neil Cavuto of Fox News asked the two Republicans about their recent back-and-forth, in which Christie charged that Rubio was trying to “slime his way to the White House,” and a super-PAC supporting Rubio portrayed Christie as a liberal in step with President Obama.

Rubio noted — after saying that he liked Christie — that the governor supported the Common Core education standards and gun control, and that he had once, years ago, made a personal donation to Planned Parenthood.

“All I’m saying is: Our next president has to be someone that undoes the damage Barack Obama has done to this country. It cannot be someone that agrees with his agenda,” Rubio said.

Cavuto asked Rubio if he considered Christie a liberal. Rubio stopped short of saying he did, but repeated many of his charges and added one more, that Christie supported Obama’s nomination of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“Unfortunately, Governor Christie has endorsed many of the ideas that Barack Obama supports, whether it is Common Core or gun control or the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor or the donation he made to Planned Parenthood,” Rubio said. “Our next president, and our Republican nominee, cannot be someone who supports those positions.”

Christie flung back at Rubio the Florida senator’s own response to Bush when the former governor attacked him in an earlier debate. At the time, Rubio said that Bush was simply doing what political consultants told him to do, because he was slipping in polls.

“I stood on the stage and watched Marco, rather indignantly, look at Governor Bush and say, ‘Someone told you that because we’re running for the same office, that criticizing me will get you to that office,’” Christie said, leaning on his rostrum and looking at Rubio. “It appears that the same someone has been whispering in old Marco’s ear too.”

Christie disputed Rubio’s charges. “I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor,” he said. “Secondly, I never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood.” And he listed steps he said he had taken to veto gun control measures: vetoes of a 50-caliber rifle ban, a clip-size reduction plan and a statewide ID system proposal.

Common Core, he said, has been “eliminated” in New Jersey.

Christie went on to dismiss Rubio’s accomplishments as a senator — “What you get to do is just talk and talk and talk” — and then mocked him for changing his tone after they became rivals. Christie came back to his charge that Rubio was changing his stripes and abandoning his high-minded tone of a few months ago.

“I like Marco too, and two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed,” Christie said. “That was before he was running against me. Now that he is, he’s changed his tune.”

But Rubio failed to press his attack on several points where Christie would seem to be vulnerable.

In 1994, Christie did say he had donated money to Planned Parenthood, but now says he was misquoted. He was pro-choice in the early 1990s, but says he changed his views after hearing his daughter’s heartbeat in utero.

In the early 1990s, Christie supported an assault-weapons ban, but now admits he’s changed his mind. He defended Common Core as recently as 2013, but last year abandoned this position.

On Sotomayor, Christie said he wouldn’t have nominated Sotomayor, but did say, “I support her confirmation.”

Late in the debate, as Cruz and Rubio debated tax policy, Christie interrupted to tout his own experience as a governor and once again reinforce his experience as a state executive — in contrast to Rubio’s job as a lawmaker in a body of 100 senators. And he punctuated it with a dismissive put-down.

“I’d like to interrupt this debate on the floor of the Senate,” Christie said. He reminded the audience that the question had been about entitlements, and said he wanted to talk about that subject, projecting an air of exasperation with Cruz and Rubio for not addressing the topic at hand.

When Rubio started to say that he would be happy to talk about entitlements, Christie brought him up short.

“You already had your chance, Marco. You blew it,” Christie thundered.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/rubio-and-christie-battle-for-establishment-lane-052925760.html

[Unorthodox]

Here I set up someone for reply 666, and they didn't seem to notice.  

[Rusty Edge]

I was wrong. I was sure [Sleezebag] would screw up, and somebody would replace him as clear frontrunner. Sure he has enough money to stay in the race to the end, but in such a prolonged campaign, [Sleezebag] was bound to be [Sleezebag], shoot off his mouth, and lose standing in the polls. He did, but it didn't matter. More than once.

Traditionally the media loves a horse-race story when it comes to political coverage. Neck and neck with lead changes. In my mind, I often hear the Carly Simon lyrics "keep remindin' me, how he set me up, just to watch me fall," whenever I watch campaign coverage.

Remember when they called President Regan "Teflon Ron" because nothing seemed to stick to him personally?

Both [Sleezebag] and Hillary have high negatives, but as unlikable as they are, their core supporters don't care about gaffs and bungles. They seem to shrug those off.

The two are starting to look inevitable for that reason, even though not a vote has been cast or delegate allotted. I foresee a fall mudslinging fest between a pair of Teflon titans.
The odd thing about it is that if there was a less polarizing frontrunner in the opposition party, people would be concerned about choosing a standard barer with 50 % or higher negatives, and throwing the election to the enemy.

But Hillary continues to thrive because The Donald, and vice versa.

[Buster's Uncle]

I Chased Bernie Sanders for 70 Miles Today
GQ
By Jason Zengerle  January 28, 2016, 7:16 pm ET






Jason Zengerle finds out how Bernie Sanders is bucking up the troops...............................................


I was driving east on US-63, outside of Des Moines, headed to see Bill Clinton stump for his wife Thursday night in Ottumwa. In other words, on my way to see Bill Clinton make the case against Bernie Sanders, a political figure who looms larger now than anybody could have thought just a few months ago. And that’s the moment I saw…Bernie Sanders?

In the days before Monday’s Iowa caucus, when the entire political world descends on the Hawkeye State, the place seems to shrink. So much so that you get the feeling that, at any moment, a person who wants to be president (or a person who was president) could be right in front of you. To be honest, I didn’t spot Sanders, not technically—just his gleaming campaign bus. So I decided to follow it.

Seventy miles later, it pulled up in front of a brick building in downtown Ottumwa. Inside were about 100 local Sanders volunteers; Bernie had come to give them a pep talk. Speaking into a mic attached to a scratchy portable PA system, Sanders began by thanking them. “I think everybody understands that today we are in a nip-and-tuck race. That’s a fact. So the reason that we have come so far in such a relatively short period of time is because of your efforts.” Then he implored them to keep at it. “Four days to go,” Sanders said. “We will win this election if there is a large voter turnout on Monday night. We will not win it if there is a low voter turnout. Our job in the next four days is to make certain that there is a large voter turnout.”

As Sanders posed for a quick round of pictures with the volunteers, I fell into a conversation with a young woman wearing a blue hoodie and a Bernie Sanders hat who was drinking from a giant can of Surge. Her name was Emily Crouse, and she was 23. She said she was working for minimum wage at a Subway in Ottumwa and living with her parents as she tried to save enough money to go back to college.

“He just really speaks to me,” she explained. “He’s talking about free health care. He’s talking about bringing up the minimum wage, equal pay, free college. I’m like, ‘Where has this guy been my whole life?’ ” Crouse planned to caucus for Sanders on Monday night. “I’m heading there right after work after I pick up my Mom.”

Between now and then, she was going to do whatever she could to help Sanders. “If I’m not working, I’m going to be here,” Crouse said. “I’m actually waiting to go make some calls now.” She excused herself and headed into a small room decorated with handwritten posters bearing some of Sanders’ favorite sayings. The candidate, meanwhile, slipped out a side door and got back onto his bus, headed to another town to give another pep talk to another group of volunteers.

http://www.gq.com/story/chasing-bernie-sanders-campaign-trail-iowa

[Buster's Uncle]

Republican Debate Review: Without [Sleezebag], Cruz Became The Target
Yahoo! Politics
Ken Tucker  Critic-at-Large  January 28, 2016






Donald [Sleezebag] thought he was going to be attacked by Megyn Kelly, and pulled out of the Fox News-Google Republican debate. Ted Cruz ended up being the guy who was attacked on Thursday night — not by Kelly, but by a couple of his opponents. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul aimed a number of direct hits at Cruz, and in terms of television drama, that made Cruz the chief protagonist (and antagonist) of the debate.

Marco Rubio tried to paint Ted Cruz as a phony: “Throughout this campaign, you’ve been willing to say or do anything to get votes.” Rand Paul criticized what he term Cruz’s egotistical “falseness… that is an authenticity problem — that everybody he knows is not as perfect as him.”

The night began with Kelly saying, “Let’s address the elephant not in the room tonight,” referring, of course, to [Sleezebag]. She asked Cruz, “What message do you think that sends” to Iowans? Surprisingly, Cruz failed to answer Kelly’s question, probably the easiest one he got all night. Instead, Cruz went with a painfully obvious prepared joke: “I’m a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben [Carson], you’re a terrible surgeon.” Pause. “Now that we’ve gotten the Donald [Sleezebag] portion out of the way…” Ouch. The only thing missing was a drum rim shot and some nervous, Jimmy Fallon-like giggling at his own feeble merry-making.

While the debate was notably duller without [Sleezebag], it was well-produced television. The Fox News panel of moderators—Kelly, Chris Wallace, and Bret Baier — proved the most impressive interrogators of any debate, Democratic or Republican, held thus far. It was an especially good idea to use clips of the candidates’ previous statements to challenge their current positions. Kelly introduced snippets from Cruz and Rubio that were particularly effective in suggesting both men had altered their positions on various issues fundamentally. Plus, using clips for illustrative purposes is good TV.

For example, Kelly played three clips in which Cruz said he was trying to save the 2013 Senate immigration bill. He has since said he was trying use an amendment to kill it. “Was that all an act?” asked Kelly, with a steely flourish. “It’s pretty convincing,” she said. Cruz was left scrambling to assemble a response.

Some idiot in the background of Chris Wallace’s camera angle persisted in mugging and waving at the TV audience—I was surprised it took so long for Fox News and the hall’s security to take care of that.

Nevertheless, a viewer could not come away from this debate without thinking there were essentially only two key players on the stage. Cruz and Rubio, in the fervor of their answers, the frequency with which they spoke, and the applause that they generated from their supporters, emerged clearly. Rand Paul — a last-minute addition after [Sleezebag] dropped out — also proved invaluable as an agent of good TV, needling Cruz and Rubio with deftness, and commandeering his own lustily-cheering section of the audience.

Chris Christie’s strategy — looking into the camera instead of at the moderators or his opponents, and attacking Hillary Clinton and President Obama—may be a sound campaign plan, but it made him seem like a free-floating entity, untethered from the action.

It’s always possible for participants to complain about not getting his share of the spotlight. John Kasich barely got any air time and made little impression. Carson got more air time, but, alas, his vague responses to pointed questions made less of an impression than Kasich. Who’d I leave out? Oh, right: Jeb Bush. Yup, he was there, too.

-megyn-kelly-cruz-rubio-fox-042752841.html]https://www.yahoo.com/tv/republican-debate-[Sleezebag]-megyn-kelly-cruz-rubio-fox-042752841.html

[Buster's Uncle]

AP FACT CHECK: GOP claims on carpet bombs, Kurds and economy
Associated Press
Robert Burns and Josh Boak,  January 28, 2016



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican presidential contenders let fly with some inaccuracies when they badmouthed the Obama administration on health care, military readiness and pay for construction workers in their latest debate.

And from his own event a few miles away in Des Moines Iowa, debate no-show Donald [Sleezebag] greatly exaggerated the U.S. trade deficit with China.

A look at some of the claims Thursday night and how they compare with the facts:

TED CRUZ: "We have seen now in six years of Obamacare that it has been a disaster. It is the biggest job-killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket. "

THE FACTS: Lost jobs? Since the time Obama signed the health care law in March 2010, the nation's jobless rate has fallen from 9.9 percent to 5 percent. The economy has added more than 13 million jobs over that period.

Lost insurance? The share of Americans without coverage reached a historic low of 9 percent last year, according to the government's National Health Interview Survey. More than 16 million people gained coverage since 2013, just before the law's big coverage expansion got underway.

___

[Sleezebag]: "China this year in trade will make over $500 billion dollars in terms of our trade deficit. $500 billion. That's no partnership, and I'm a free trader. I love free trade. But we have to use our head. And we use political hacks to negotiate with the Chinese."

THE FACTS: [Sleezebag] should re-check his numbers before conducting a trade negotiation. He could be referring to the total U.S. trade deficit with every country in the world. That totaled about $508 billion in 2014, which actually represents an improvement from the $762 billion deficit reached in 2006, according to the Census Bureau.

But the trade deficit in goods with China was $343 billion in 2014 — significantly below what [Sleezebag] has suggested in multiple statements.

___

MARCO RUBIO: "You cannot destroy ISIS with a military that's being diminished."

CRUZ: Obama has "dramatically degraded our military.

"THE FACTS: The charge that President Barack Obama has starved the Pentagon has become a refrain in the GOP primary campaign, but amounts spent on weapons modernization are about the same as they were when Republican George W. Bush was president.

Any military cuts GOP contenders are complaining about were approved by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The military budget is being squeezed by the insistence of lawmakers in both parties that money be spent on bases and equipment that the Pentagon says it doesn't need.

___

CRUZ on Obama: "He's not arming the Kurds."

THE FACTS: He is. The U.S. has allocated a substantial amount of weapons and other military equipment to help the Kurds fight the Islamic State group, and is sending the aid.

The shipments have not been direct. Rather, under a deal with the Iraqi government, all U.S. weapons sent to help in the fight are delivered to Iraqi officials, and they divide the weapons between Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

It's true the Kurds have complained that the assistance is not enough. But they are getting arms and other equipment from Washington.

___

CHRIS CHRISTIE: "For the 45-year-old construction worker out there, who is having a hard time making things meet, he's lost $4,000 in the last seven years in his income because of this administration."

THE FACTS: There may be some in hard hats who've lost income, but on the whole, construction workers are faring much better than they did when Obama first took office.

The latest federal jobs report showed their average weekly earnings have risen 2.7 percent annually since 2009 — much faster than the national average for non-management employees. Their weekly earnings jumped to $1,021 in December, compared with a weekly income of $858 seven years ago.

Certainly not everyone has prospered. Overall, the median household income has dropped since 2009 by $1,268, to $53,657.

___

CRUZ defending his threat to "carpet bomb" Islamic State fighters: "It's what we did in the first Persian Gulf War."

THE FACTS: The U.S. conducted an intensive air war against the Saddam Hussein government in the 1991 war. But to call it "carpet bombing" misses one of the most important characteristics of that air campaign: It marked the first large-scale use of precision-guided missiles and bombs in the history of warfare.


 That war also saw the first substantial combat use of the Air Force F-117 stealth fighter, which made it possible for the U.S. to lower risk to pilots flying against enemy air defenses while delivering precision weapons.

 The driving force behind developing precision-guided munitions, which today are even more precise than 25 years ago in the Persian Gulf war, was the goal of reducing the risk of killing civilians. It's a goal the U.S. military has embraced under Republican as well as Democratic presidents.

And Cruz has not explained how carpet bombing a terrorism group that is mingled with citizens in areas they control can be done without substantial deaths of innocents.

___

               RUBIO: Asked to reconcile his past opposition to granting amnesty for people in the United States illegally and his sponsorship of a bill that would grant those people a path to U.S. citizenship, said "We're going to keep ISIS out of America" and "enforce our immigration laws."

               CRUZ: Asked to reconcile his vocal backing for the same bill (along with his attempt to improve its chances with an amendment), and his current claim to never have supported it, said; "The fact that each amendment didn't fix every problem didn't mean that I supported the rest of the bill."

               THE FACTS: About the only thing that was clear in this exchange is that both are squirming over their past immigration positions in a primary season dominated by conservative voters.

               For Rubio, there was one fact on the stage that he couldn't escape — fellow candidate Jeb Bush verified that Rubio asked him to support his path-to-citizenship legislation when it was being written in 2013. And Cruz was caught by a video clip of himself on the Senate floor, urging the bill's passage. 

               Both tried to dismiss their previous statements and emphasize their current stance of wanting to secure the nation's southern border before any other actions are taken to address immigrants living in the country illegally.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Des Moines, Iowa, and Vivian Salama, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.

[Rusty Edge]

APNewsBreak: US declares 22 Clinton emails 'top secret'

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e19abf78b6fe43e7b7719f059901630d/apnewsbreak-govt-finds-top-secret-info-clinton-emails

"The FBI also is looking into Clinton's email setup, but has said nothing about the nature of its probe. Independent experts say it's unlikely Clinton will be charged with wrongdoing, based on details that have surfaced so far and the lack of indications she intended to break laws.

"What I would hope comes out of all of this is a bit of humility" and Clinton's acknowledgement that "I made some serious mistakes," said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer specializing in security clearance matters.

Legal questions aside, it's the potential political costs that probably more concern Clinton. She has struggled in surveys measuring perceived trustworthiness and any investigation, buoyed by evidence of top secret material coursing through her account, could negate a main selling point for her becoming commander in chief: her national security resume. "

Well, if nothing else, the timing sucks for Hillary. I can't help but think that the Obama administration really doesn't like her, if the State Department called a press conference to make this announcement now.

[Buster's Uncle]

...The woman's got a lot of bad points, but I really don't find that overblown scandal to be one of the interesting ones...