Daily Roundup -- Feb 3. 2016

 Talking Points Memo: CNN->Cruz dirty tricks

The hyperlink above takes you to a walk through of what happened. At 6:43 PM CT (15 minutes before the opening of the Caucuses), Dana Bash discuses with Chris Moody that Carson would return home to Florida after the contest, and she concluded: “If you want to be President of the United States, you don't go home to Florida,” 

8:PM Cruz camp notifies their supporters that Carson was dropping out. 

This is shortly after a spokesman for Carson tweeted that he was going to Florida for a change of clothes.

Cruz's surrogates at the Caucuses urged the caucus goers not to wast their votes and vote for Cruz. 

That's it ------------------------  

1. Carson now demands that someone be fired for not checking on the accuracy of their information in Cruz's campaign. -- Seems reasonable

2. Trump argues that he was robbed of 1st place since Cruz got additional votes from Carson. He demands a new election and will sue Cruz.  -- There is some truth here as well.  How much can be argued.

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WAPO: Cut Clinton some slack -Dana Milbank

"When is a win not a win?  When the winner is Hillary Clinton." 

Dana goes on to tout the first woman who ever won Iowa, and the fact that in this democratic state, she got more votes than any Republican.

He doesn't mention she won by 6 coin tosses, any 2 of which failing would have meant her defeat.  This means she had a 1 in 64 chance losing, but she ran the deck with her special coin. Dana does know that Rick Santorum beat Romney "by all of 34 votes in 2012" but he missed that Mrs Clinton won by at most 4 votes. Hillarious?

Mrs. Clinto deserves to be congratulated for having escaped prison so far, but not for winning IOWA. She has gotten too much slack from the State Department, and even more from the Justice department. She doesn't deserve any in IOWA.

Critique of The Discipline of Gratitude-- E.J. Dionne Jr

Critique of The Discipline of Gratitude-- E.J. Dionne Jr


I agree with a lot you say, but the crack about Republicans taking "You did not build that " out of context is uncalled for.
I trace POTUS statement to John Rawls who is taught at our Universities and whose position is that almost nothing we achieve is due to some particular good we have earned.  If we are smart, it was in our genes, hence there is no accomplishment. If we succeed it is because the society we live in appreciates the skills we have developed, once again, we are without input. If we work hard, its because we have been trained by our parents to do so.

This view of the President (and Rawls, and Mrs. Clinton) negates free will, the ability to work hard because of our personal decisions based on character and will.  What Rawls (and POTUS) say is correct, but it does not explain why people with similar backgrounds and capabilities succeed and fail differently, nor does it correspond to the accepted formulation of "Survival of the Fittest"

Let's all be thankful for the gifts we inherited, those we developed, and the opportunities our village has provided for us.  But let us not forget that it is effort, personal effort which produces results.

Let's remember that the little group in Massachusetts formee a failed comune whose experiment of working and sharing in common led to hunger, starvation, and death. Only when Governor Bradford canceled socialism and let free enterprise revive, did the colony prosper. "Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products,” sell whatever overages they had. “And what was the result? ‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford [in his journal], ‘for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.'” See Breitbart on Thanksgiving for a fuller story, or any of the myriad books written on the Pilgrims.