Jihadist' Jail @ Gitmo. America's National Disgrace

Forget, if you can, the fact that Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility (acronym GTMO or Gitmo for short) is a significant recruitment tool for the worldwide Jihad. That alone should pattern our decisions surrounding it's existence.

Instead, let's simply focus on the details.  Even if we choose to transfer the terrorists housed in Gitmo stateside, we will pay for their lives (well over half are on hunger strike and must be force fed) for the rest of their lives. The cost of doing so at the Gitmo facility in Cuba makes everything exponentially more expensive.

From strictly a perspective of ANOTHER socialized program for tax payers to endure, this one is one of the worst. I realize that modern day prisons are also a really bad socialized means of making us feel safe from criminals, because it mostly trains them to do crime and sends them back on our street to test their skills before they finally get sent to prison to stay as habitual prisoners; habitual meaning they've practiced a lot.

If the government is considering an abandoned facility to house
terrorists, what about Camp Leatherneck's wasted facility?

What exactly does locking up suicide terrorists actually protect us from? Colorado republican Senator, Cory Gardner, rejects the notion of sending Jihadists to Colorado's Supermax prison, or to an abandoned prison in Colorado, but quickly admits that terrorism will continue whether WE behave humanely or not.

I scratched my head for quite some time after Gardner made that statement (2/23 on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Report) because I suddenly realized that Gardner, and everyone who agrees with him (including Marco Rubio), has decided that our image in the world means nothing one way or the other, so why should America care one way or the other?

Why should we continue to uphold some old aged sense of decency that hasn't stopped evil doers from attacking the bastion of freedom in order to weaken freedom as a whole?

Why should integrity and values matter when dealing with the Jihad? Are we always expected to address evil with wisdom and restraint?

Essentially, these are the type of questions you have to ask yourself in order to justify the persistence of Gitmo, America's jail for the Jihad......which, by the way, doesn't house everybody who joined the Jihad, ONLY middle eastern captured enemies.  What jail is Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) being held in?

If so many Americans are truly convinced of the necessity of a Jihadi Jail @ Gitmo, they have to accept that we are abandoning former core values by doing so; core values that former president George W. Bush may have to answer to one day.

In essence, WE the People of the United States of America, have chosen to fight this particular fire by circling the fire starters within a ring of fire, pushing back every detainee who'd prefer the fiery death option by use of a really expensive pitch fork no less.

To respond to any evil with even a small dose of its own medicine doesn't change evil or its way. It changes US.  For now, fear and anger are enough to keep Gitmo operational because the GOP is full of both emotions, and in full control of both houses of congress too.

Until WE temper the emotions that caused Gitmo to be in the first place, it remains our knee jerk reaction to an immediate crisis that our past two presidents have now admitted was a grave error. Those who think it belongs around FOREVER are stuck in crisis mode and incapable of guiding this nation away from Gitmo or the fear and anger of terror.
As long as terror produces fear and anger and breaches of the Geneva convention pact, terror succeeds.

Progressivism's Problematic Path To The Presidency

Am I the only person who got caught off guard with today's primaries? When did Super Tuesday turn into saucy Saturday in primary politics?  Who expected to be talking politics this weekend, and who knew that it would be so significant to the future of the race?

The world of progressive politics has become so pervasive, that the GOP candidates have to spend as much time as they can bashing Obama just to keep from sounding just like Hillary and Bernie all of the time, while Hillary has resorted to GOP tactics just to deal with the pain of the Bern.

Sure, that joke about all the free stuff the Socialist Sanders will give away when he's president sounds like a funny line for sake of a chuckle, but it doesn't really offer alternatives to the current scenario in which incomes have plummeted and only forced hands will loosen enough to change that fact.  What force ends up looking like in the end is a matter of significant debate among both sides of establishment resistance.

Has GOP voters given in to the Trump craze
even though the GOP establishment has not?

What is not debated is the necessity of more income for average Americans.  Trump might be winning over massive support being the former Democrat that is willing to talk like a tough republican for the sake of a GOP win, but if you ask him what motivates him, he says he loves his work, meaning the deal making and the showmanship, not the politics.  When pressed, he still refuses to own that politician label while continuing to beg us all for a political vote of confidence.

Polls, and tonight's primary results (SC) strongly tilt toward Trump- until you place him head to head with either of the remaining candidates from the opposing side.  In that polling, Trump gets trolloped.  Yet, the tendency for either potential trolloper to prematurely lick their chops needs to be curtailed until they finish their own infighting.

In recent days, Bernie Sanders has correctly accused Clinton and her husband of damaging the black community as it relates to excessive incarcerations and those restrictive welfare policies (welfare to work) and programs that forced single black moms out of the house leaving black children without supervision.  The impact on many poor black single parent households was young men and women captured by the influence of gangs or drugs while  hard working black mothers struggled to keep food stamp support (which now requires both a job and poverty to maintain) to feed her remaining latchkey children that gangs haven't yet taken.

Like Jeb Bush and 9-11, can Hillary
embrace Bill's good without touching the bad?

If Bill and Hillary can admit that the policies were wrong, then they must admit that it was the impact their policies had on real lives that made them wrong, regardless of their good intentions or other good things they've accomplished for poor people in general.

Conversely, Senator Sanders has been accused of offering way too much in the way of free public services without a realistic vision of how to get it passed through congress or paid through fiscal provisions.  This is also an accurate claim against Sanders and his ideas, though ObamaCare, Social Security, the military, public schools or any needed socialized program demands proper funding adjustments to realize optimal efficiency, a word that is typically not associated with our government.

Hence the problem.

That same inefficient government likely holds the last best hope for price controls within our healthcare industry, controls that exist in nearly every country expect America. Current growth trends relative to medical costs show healthcare increasing at a much lower rate than it did prior to ObamaCare's beginning, but insurance companies are fighting to keep you from finding out.  For Sanders to speak to the necessity of changes in areas like medical costs or college debt strapping our children, doesn't immediately make him responsible for the details that would go with implementation of these obvious needs.

Hillary tried her hand at healthcare before Obama got it done and knows that details always need to be ironed out. Bernie also understands that the Clinton's expected their policies to ruin black families about as much as Bush expected to ignite ISIS with his invasion of Iraq.  For now, what they both know of each other and what they are saying lately have grown worlds apart.

For now, the gloves are not totally off, but Hillary and Bernie have switched to those smaller MMA version of gloves so that the sting is felt a little more.  Clinton has recognized the threat of Sanders despite his Democratic Socialist label, and Sanders has discovered a real viability for his message in spite of his Democratic Socialist label.

What shall proceed is not helpful to either candidate or to this coronation for progressivism.   Clinton is not going to be better off for having to explain how Bill screwed up black people or for having to articulate an impossible agenda for dealing with it when black people who support Sanders inevitably pose the question to her.  Sanders, on the other hand, is also not better served for having to do the very thing that Donald Trump scoffs at- share policy details.

If Sanders has to explain the single payer system too much, it won't get him elected and we will be stuck with huge deductibles, since huge deductibles are the last best place for the medical insurance industry to stick it to us and cover their shareholder commitments. Medical industry profits aren't as huge as most people think, and are mostly derived from the assured  long term presence of sick people and the low risk, high profit investment that assured sick people create.  Until we become truly healthy in our bodies and in our funding of healthy bodies- and a viable competitive alternative comes along to disconnect true healthiness from the sick industry that bears its name- the health industry has no real incentive to change.

Again, Hillary knows this.  What she doesn't know is how to stop Bernie Sanders without establishment support, and so she is resorting to the very things that the GOP will do to Bernie if in fact he is able to actually beat her and be the party nominee.

Is Ted Cruz developing a ceiling on his support that
Trump and Marco Rubio are likely to split if he falters?

Politics 101:  Never give your opponents the knife they're seeking to slay you with.

Of course, if Trump keeps tagging republicans with primary losses and the terrorism of 9-11 (which no other GOP candidate ever admits), the GOP might  soon hand Trump over to Hillary as the knife that she'll use to slash republican throats and make them bleed out all together. Jeb Bush's departure from the race might help the GOP secure a nominee, but the reasonable one's are dropping like flies.

Whatever they try to do to actually stop Trump promises to be an even better show than what we've seen thus far. Either way you project it, the future of this year in politics will be a whole lot of blood shedding, political entertainment as the two party establishment machines fight to kill progressivism while adopting it at the same time.

This week in politics is revealing that the last man or woman standing will be battered and bruised in the eyes of the general electorate because they will have already been weakened and drained of significant life blood from taking too many stiff jabs and knife stabs during the 2016 primary season.

And then the bare knuckle and grenades begin. Today, we took one significant step towards all that.

Again and Again, Elway (And Vegas) Wins

Punditry is the profession of know-it-all'ism, yet time and time again, we know it all's keep falling for the same emotional okey doke like everyday fans do when we don't adhere to axioms like defense winning championships as they keep saying. After Superbowl 50 ended, the top defense had added to their victories over the top offense when both meet up in the Bowl, increasing the lead to 10-2.

Defense is that known quotient that all champions attest to as the reason they walk around with the shine of victory's glory, but its never really the reason we tune in for the show.  We appreciated Von Miller being the most reliable entity in all of football this year, but not enough to ignore the bore of watching Manning and Osweiler dink and dunk their way to Superbowl supremacy.

Consequently, the speed at which our local conversation has switched over to draft and free agency in Denver is mind blowing.  Come to think  of it, we might have been  there prior to our Superbowl victory, with our head coach and the backup quarterback (the original backup, not Manning) included in the conversation of people we should retain, or not.  For now, most of that Fire Kubiak stuff has died off, yet the backdrop of doubt over the backup who's scheduled to get paid remains, along with quiet skepticism over coach Kubiak's approach and his worthiness to keep leading this great team that Elway has compiled.

The defense played so well, that we don't really know which coach to actually credit for this victory, so let's focus on the compilation of players and coaches instead.

Once again, John Elway has done exactly what people thought impossible, just like he did when he took Denver's under manned football teams to the Superbowl again and again, culminating in Superbowl victories, again and again, to close out his career. Whoever actually won the award for NFL executive of the year needs to take that award and deliver it to Elway, pronto.

This time, Elway successfully pulled the levers, engineered a plan and put it into place by compiling the parts, pieces and the mantra for how it would be accomplished.  In defensive era football, you get lucky to connect on the few chances that even great defenses will give you to make big plays in big games. Take too many chances and you are more likely to turn the ball over and suffer defeat at the hands of teams perfectly willing to make field goals and grind it out versus shooting for the stars and getting stuck in the trees.

That was how I viewed things as a pundit of the team I love.  But the Broncos remain the team that I love, which means my deep analysis is often just hope masquerading as clear eyed perspective.

In order to gain that clear eyed view when I look at teams and games from the "know-it-all" view of a pundit, I have to tip my hat to the place with the best track record for know-it-all'ism.

VEGAS.

According to the word on the street, Denver was struggling too much with offensive production and identity with the in and out of  Osweiler and Manning, whose best production had barely shown glimpses of the kind of greatness that Denver's defense produced regularly.  Listening to that same word on the street, I heard that Pittsburgh's offensive production was too much to stop for Denver or any defense.  The same unstoppable expectation torch was passed to the legend, Tom Brady, after Ben Roethlisberger and his Steelers couldn't get it done.

The rhetoric was justified and the expectations reasonable based upon the emotional view of the contest and the  regular season track record of the quarterbacks being asked to live up to the emotional view of things.

Yet, the Vegas betting lines never matched the emotions.

Sure, Vegas had New England to beat Denver, but they didn't have them to win by the numbers that emotional pundits promised the Patriots should win by.  Was Vegas confused and struggling against the trend of emotional bets?

Similarly, pundits had Cam killing Denver, but Vegas had him squeaking out a win by 3.5 points that stretched to 5.5, giving ground to emotions betting habits just to help maintain the ruse. Did Vegas already know what we finally learned?

Let's get this straight once and for all.  VEGAS IS RARELY CONFUSED ABOUT WHO WILL WIN.

If you ever start to feel like the fix is in when you watch too much NFL football, it is not because the players have pre-planned some shenanigans, it is because Vegas tells the NFL- and the rest of us- who will win (indirectly) and the NFL believes what they say, even though the rest of us don't listen.

In fact, the NFL listens closely, they try to engineer story lines around Vegas probabilities.  What that demands is to understand what Vegas does when they expect a team to be a double digit winner versus what they do when you expect the wrong team to be a double digit winner. Whatever you are thinking about the game, remember that Vegas intends to be the only real winner.

If Vegas ever catches America talking about a blowout from a team they don't even expect to win the game, it becomes a case of betting enticement that ALWAYS ends up with Vegas on top. Keep the line too low, and the bettors catch wind.  Push the line too high and the bettors get afraid their team can't cover those points.




Just so you know, Vegas might be at it again.

When the opening lines for next years Superbowl champion came out, the Broncos were nowhere near the top, with 14 to 1 odds of them winning again.  By day two, those odds dropped down to 20:1.  Did Vegas lose faith in the QB  and the free agent uncertainty in Denver, or were there just not enough people biting on the opening line so Vegas had to extend the lure a bit?

Believe it or not, Vegas might they have agitated the wrong bettor this time?

Did the lack of betting line respect for the Broncos final games impact the bite in the dogs from Denver?  Did it propel the Broncos teammates into a brotherhood of togetherness unlike we've ever seen in recent championship history? Will Peyton Manning bring that championship trophy over to the Papa John's that is 3 minutes away from my house in Denver, Colorado (where my daughter works) so we can get pictures of it?

I said that partially to name drop the fact that Manning owns the pizza parlor where my kid works, but I am mostly talking about the future for Manning the man.  What happens to this legendary champion after all the crowds stop cheering, and he's no longer climbing up the record books? Can Denver find the same passion and inspiration for greatness without their on-the-field coach pushing them to be greater than they otherwise would? Love him or hate him, Manning was exactly that for this team.  A reason to do more, and a teacher to tell you how. As a result, he still might be the most important piece of the championship puzzle that Elway has to keep together.

Is Manning really ready to call it a career just because everyone (except his teammates) thinks he should?

That is where my betting hat starts to analyze things.  Manning, a generally cocky QB, was perfectly happy to tell the entire world how thankful he was to his Bronco brothers for letting him jump on their back for a championship ride. We understood that he was riding wounded, we just didn't accept what our eyes were telling us.  Had Manning finally lost the supremacy that makes NO ONE question him as the best regular season quarterback of all time?  That may seem like a slight against his playoff failures, but sports are a funny business, and we fans rarely agree over topics like GOAT, even if we are limiting him to regular season GOAT only.

In reality, no one ever argues that point.  He stood right at the gates of being crowned as the true GOAT before Seattle and the Seahawks turned him into another losing donkey two years ago.

Quite frankly, that was the last thing that Manning needed for his already tattered legacy, and most of us Broncos faithful were not terribly happy to be gaining a quarterback with the same underachieving label that we already lived with long before his arrival, despite our back to back championships two score ago.

Functionally, the Denver Broncos have shunned their losing label with their Superbowl 50 win, but Manning has not.  Until further notice, he has simply jumped on the back of a team that was totally sick of the criticism over their tainted history with Superbowl's, and said enough already.  They said it in such a way that those same shell shocked pundits are now weighing the defensive performance against the greatest defensive performances of all time.

Denver might not have yet gained the title as Greatest D Of All Time (GDOAT), but the conversation hasn't really concluded yet either.  We are still reviewing the tape from the Bowl and the season to see what we looked at but didn't understand until it was too late. What we keep seeing keeps impressing us more and more to the point that you are either betting that Denver loses defensive players to other teams, or you are betting they retain them and solidify their place in history, depending on what side of this fan fence you sit.

That entire bet hinges on what happens at the quarterback position.  Either the Broncos will spend on their quarterback, or they will spend on their defense, because this championship team can not be retained without a financial sacrifice from several key players.  You know, like the sacrifice from a brotherhood of men that bonded itself together to overcome rookie and wounded quarterbacks as well as doubt and coaching criticism against their way of getting it done.

The criticism kind of continues in the lack of expectation for this coming year.  Either Vegas doesn't expect much from Denver, or critics don't.   The betting lines seem to suggest that critics are to blame just like they were in Superbowl 50, when Vegas knew Denver was going to beat Carolina even though the pundit expectation was for Cam to do a whole lot of dabbing.

I am also searching for some betting odds that Manning will not only stay in Denver, but that he will bring that trophy to our Papa John's so my daughter and the rest of the staff can take pictures and learn what hard work and perseverance can achieve. That speech rings slightly hollow if you were simply along for the ride.

So then he'll take a humongous pay cut just to ride that Bronco one more time, because he has plenty of outside loot with my daughter trying to pump out pizza's like a champion before she heads off to college this fall, .

Peyton might have won Superbowl 50, but did he do enough
to silence those critical of his post season failures?

I am betting that this time around, he's looking to dismount our championship horse while feeling like he was a worthy jockey and not just along for the ride. This time, he'll be playing with the same chip on his shoulder that the city of Denver flicked off with our recent championship.  This time, our championship win won't be for John or Pat or for anybody else on the planet.

This time will be for Peyton.  Bet on it.

Broncos Reach Mountain Top. Colorado Wants More

I sincerely wanted to feel ecstatically euphoric about my Denver Broncos winning Superbowl 50, but I have to be honest.  It was somewhat anti-climactic for a fan who has seen this all before.

Not so much the championship thing. Of course we've seen that part before, assuming you are of a certain age that is.  My youngest kid is heading downtown to see the big parade today because she was too young. I've done those parades, and the only thing really cool about them is the unified joy surrounding the reason you came out to celebrate in the first place.

The rest of it is sweaty, smelly and slightly claustrophobic if you suffer from such things.  The last parade brought out 650,000 revelers. This one promised to be worse...or better, depending on how you look at it.

When you combine the depression of accepting that the most unified moment of fellowship that we consistently enjoy as a nation- NFL football- has finally come to and end, I found myself more interested in searching out all of those crap talking naysayers who messaged their doubt throughout the entire season.  Even though I knew for certain that most of them were resorting to the bitter taste of whiskey to sooth their angered souls- the same whiskey that tasted extra sweet on the lips of the victors- I searched for someone who would swallow their pride and eat crow all in one failed swoop.

Nothing.

 I really hoped to find one guy who taunted all of Broncos nation with his incessant demeaning comments because no one wanted to bet him via Facebook, proving (in his mind) that no Denver fans actually believed that Denver would win.

At last posting, he's refusing to pay up to some of those same fans except an Uncle in his family who probably was the only person who had a hope in hell of collecting in the first place.

When we won it all, I thought about this "bet taunting" joker and how I could stick it in his face for doubting that my city has the stuff of championship form.

Who dat say we gonna lose another Bowl?

Did he and other Broncos naysayers have justifiable cause for the ridicule they level on this team?

In reality, my Denver Broncos are the most justifiably ridiculed champion that ever competed on the highest stage.  What we are known for is what most hate us for in the end.

We Are Over Achievers By Choice.

In Colorado, we climb 16'ers just because they are there.  No, really.

We hurt our muscles and blister our hands to reach the summit of a mountain, only to imagine in our minds the next mountain top.

Before the Broncos won, the Avs showed
them how to get it done.  Parade and all.

In Colorado, we've seen mountain tops on many occassions.  A few times, we got there only to discover that someone else reached the summit first.  Does that take away from our ability to climb or our thirst to be first?  On the contrary.  Our experiences- good, bad and ugly- have made us into the great state that we are.

We've won championship titles in every sport from lacrosse to soccer to hockey. Olympians live here just to chase after thin-aired mountain tops like we do for hobby.  We bike, we hike, we run, ski and golf all year round in this blessed state.  And though our cost of living has risen commiserate to the population boom that comes from being us, we complain and keep on moving because somewhere in that mountainous western backdrop is a spirit that inspires our passions, watches over our region, and occassionally appoints us to trials that only climbers can endure.

Columbine and the Aurora Theater were traumatic missions for a state that has now established the blueprint on terror mitigation, but our Superbowl blowouts at the hands of black quarterbacks were trauma of another, unrelated sort.   Did the butt kicking from those last two brothers set the third one up to take us for granted?  It certainly helped to remove the stigma on the black quarterback, making Cam the first black quarterback favored to win the Bowl.  We played an important role in each of those episodes. Were these traumas simply divine burdens of being us?

Hard to know for certain. What I do know is that I am Colorado, which means I am chissled and shaped by the impact of all of it.  I am Colorado, which means I ski in the morning and golf in the afternoon so that I can sooth the pain of loss and terror while remembering the importance of being diligent and aware of both.

Losing wasn't really too scary for me and those of my kind. We've seen the mountain top even when we've arrived too late.  In our NFL journey, we've summitted as many times as any team in the league, along with losing more times, losing with the biggest point deficits, and now we even have the worst quarterback rating EVER for a team that won the game.

On the other hand, we might have also won it with the best defensive performance in the history of the final game while using the best regular season quarterback in the history of the game,  backed by the best front office guy who remains in the conversation as the best quarterback to ever win as well.

You may not appreciate the results that we've achieved given the wealth of chances that we have had to do it, but you have to respect the wealth of chances.  The Denver Broncos are often in the mix and are threatening to remain in the mix for years to come.  Some might choose to focus on the failures, but even they can't deny the chances.

In Broncos nation,  we reveled in the moment for the first few hours of victory

By morning time, the only post Superbowl posts I could consistently find were "When will the Rockies and the Nuggets" do the same?

Yep.  You got it.

In Colorado, we are already seeking new mountains to climb and new parades to plan, because We Are Colorado.  That's just what we do.

Rubio Is Rising. Clinton Is Moderately Progressive

Keep your eyes affixed.  The winners of Iowa (even third placers) will impact the amount of gas the Super PAC's will put into their candidates race car before they pull the plug and find a racer with a better chance at winning.

Did you know that when a caucus room is split evenly between two
prospective candidates for president, the stalemate is broken by a coin flip?

Apparently, Marco Rubio put  quite a bit of effort into his engine to gain the spot that he got from Iowa, and is expected to try a similar win from the back attack to achieve similar success in NH. If you find it somewhat odd for a candidate to fight like crazy just to be a second or third, you don't get how peculiar caucusing is. In fact, caucusing is almost exactly like Super PAC'ing, in which the biggest groups try to promote a viable candidate, but must bow out and shift their support elsewhere once their first choice loses viability, lest they risk wasting their support.

Be it several crowds of people caucusing in some high school gym, or several piles of money gathered together in the name of a Political Action Committee, this game is about finding financial gamblers to keep alive your political aspirations, and keeping that PAC behind your back for a long enough time to survive the attrition of the process.

Unless you are Donald Trump of course, who is engaging in mostly merchandise sales and speaking event ticket sales to fund his effort to be president, on top of being really rich to begin with.

Trump remains the main candidate that is NOT beholden to any financial engine as his means of getting his message across. Bernie Sanders is in a similar position with his, NO SUPER PAC, small donor effort to upset Hillary, but even he is raising and spending money in lock step with other candidates who feel that they must spend to survive early in this race.

Jeb Bush actually spent more money in Iowa ($2800 per vote that he won) than everyone combined, only to end up in....in (what place did Jeb end up in?).

Let me repeat that in case you missed it.

Did the only Libertarian quit because he
wanted to, or did his supporters pull the plug ?

Jeb Bush.....all by himself......spent more money in Iowa than all of the other GOP candidates combined, comparative to the votes that he received for his spending. Only Bush and Mike Huckabee exceeded $500 spent per vote received in the final outcome of Iowa, bringing into question the value of the increased levels of spending allowed under new campaign finance laws.

Granted, Iowa and New Hampshire might be worth the spend, as they are critical testing grounds for whether or not your campaign has the legs to endure 48 more states worth of caucusing.
As a result of the failures in Iowa, Rand Paul has suspended his
campaign-  as did Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee,
and democrat Martin O'Malley.

Did O'Malley know he was leaving before he agreed to that last debate that originally included him, but wasn't originally guaranteed to include Sanders?  Might O'Malley have tipped his hand to the DNC or Hillary?  Both Hillary and the DNC needed O'Malley just to schedule the debate, and to continue on with it had Sanders pulled a Trump and not shown up.

O'Malley just so happened to stay in the race long enough to split the democrat vote in Iowa, making it more possible for Hillary to squeak out a narrow victory there. Those 7 precincts that O'Malley garnered  in Iowa would have been up for grabs between Hillary and Bernie had O'Malley quit prior to Iowa, which could have made the outcome and the narrative of Iowa drastically different.

Why Is Iowa So Full Of It?

Iowa is nearly as littered with right wing fundamentalism as it is countered with far left leaning liberals (I said Iowa was full of it).  Although the evangelicals clearly dominate the population, Iowa's last 3 selections from the GOP have yet to survive the primary season to become the nominee.

Does that mean Iowa doesn't really know what they are talking about?

Oh, contrare.

What happens in Iowa is what we are talking about now, and in many ways will dictate what we talk about in the days to come.  How candidates finish in NH will be contrasted against the success or failure of Iowa.  If you can't appeal to either of these polar opposite voting blocks, you probably don't have enough appeal to stay in the race.

Exiting NH, the GOP field is supposed to whittle down drastically.

Supposed to.

In a normal world, Trump was supposed to pay the cost for not having a real ground attack in Iowa, and for not really being an evangelical in a state that mostly selects evangelicals as its choice for president. As it turned out, Mr. 'No ground game' Trump, was only 4 points away from joining the list of previous republican winners in Iowa that would have included Pastor Pat Robertson, Pastor Mike Huckabee, ultra evangelical Senator Rick Santorum and Trump.

As it turned out, ultra evangelical Ted Cruz went all in (probably cheated) just to beat Trump by 4 points and Rubio by 5.

Rubio raced in from the rear and nearly rear ended Cruz and Trump.  He did so well in fact, that Rubio is now describing Iowa like that race car driver who gets interviewed during the middle of a race delay while seated several cars back, but clearly the driver in the fastest car.

Actually?  That describes Rubios position perfectly, but let's put that into perspective some.

Rubio and Cruz finished exactly as the polls said they would.  Well, Cruz actually fell to second place in the polls during the closing weeks of Iowa, and engineered his own last minute ground attack to inspire his evangelical base in Iowa to help him do what he, nor Rubio, will likely do in NH.

 In other words, they both must celebrate and bloviate Iowa's success just to endure NH.  If NH becomes the slaughtering house evangelical candidates expect it to be (many long shot candidates don't even bother going to NH), Iowa will be the memory and the rhetoric that they hold unto as they press a gauze on their wounds and press on to Nevada or South Carolina- two upcoming states with polar opposite electorates much like Iowa and NH.

Was this "Official Public Record" stating the caucus habits
of Iowans and their neighbors a slimy approach to politics?
It turns out to be a ruse by Cruz to stimulate turnout.

Ben Carson was one of those evangelical's that did not head straight to NH, but went home to Florida for some rest and relaxation, and to plan for a March 15 primary victory in Florida instead of heading straight to an unfriendly state right after an untimely, possibly even unfair defeat.

According to both the Carson and the Trump campaigns (Carson's wife heard this happening herself), the Cruz campaign team shared and tweeted the heading home to Florida news (via a CNN report) about Carson in the middle of the caucus, apparently to scare Carson supporters into thinking that Dr. Carson was posturing for an exit, and Cruz was the next evangelical in line for those votes.

Cruz's team doesn't really deny sharing Carson's CNN divulged itinerary, but denies doing it as a statement about Carson's future candidacy. Although the mere mentioning of it during caucus voting feels shady, and sends some red flags as to how desperate Cruz was to live up to his Iowa expectations. The fake voter violation piece from the Cruz campaign team creates even more integrity concerns than the misinformation does.


Trump has tweeted the Iowa results as "illegal" and "stolen" by the Cruz team, calling for a new election. While many people feel that this is just more Trump spin to help rhetorically nullify the Cruz victory and the Trump defeat (Cruz call it a Trumpertrantrum), the Carson team is the team impacted most, and they are verifying the attack as having happened as well.

In the grand scheme of things, this is the season of expectations and of assessing the ability of each individual candidate to live up to, or exceed their individual expectations as a candidate relative to each state primary.  What evangelicals candidates achieve down South or in Iowa won't necessarily work in blue states. Meeting or exceeding the spot expected of you is about the extent of what it takes to win right now which basically means, keeping your donors intact.

Consequently, Rubio not only maintained his donors and his level of expectation, he equalled the production of the venerable Donald Trump.  What no one seems to accept is that this (Iowa, that is) speaks more positively about Trump than it does Rubio or even Cruz who mostly only did what Iowa has consistently done before.  Choose the evangelical.

If Hillary can simply minimize the impact of being in Bernies
backyard, she can win NH like Rubio did.  By default.
Hey Bernie....you barely beat me.  Hey Bernie.....Hey, Hey!!

Trump finished near the top, but was NEVER expected to really get people to caucus for him.

Hillary might have a similar struggle in NH where Sanders holds a huge lead in the polls. But for reasons of low expectation purely, Hillary has an opportunity to dance the Rubio if she can just do a little better than we think she can. Her ground game in Iowa suggests that NH will be worth the watch.

On either side of the isle, the conversation comes down to headcount.  Too many heads in the GOP  might soon put all but Trump down for the count, since Trump's stump speech is the only one noticeably different than any other GOP candidate in the field; and different is working for him right now.

As for the Dem's?  The lack of a substantive lead has forced Hillary to beg for more debates so she can contrast her message against that of Bernie Sanders. On one level, she has moved to the left of Sander's (gun control), but mostly she's claiming that he's too far left to be of functional value to the party or the real world, reminding Bernie that those rich Americans are Americans too.

Sanders has countered with a claim that Clinton is doing too much of a progressive tap dance as it relates to her campaign rhetoric despite close relationships with Washington's big money machines. Neither of them really win the primary season having to track too far to the left if they then struggle to find their way back to being progressively moderate, or moderately progressive enough for a general election.

For now, most of us are fully confused about what either term really means anymore


Are WE truly ready to take on the powers that be and take over our nation once and for all as Sanders suggests we do? Or will we calm down and let the powers be, but pressure them to be a little more fair? And which of the remaining candidates (other than Trump and Sanders), will show the moxie to call out big money while also begging them to help fund their elections? 

Popcorn please.  This should get good.

Trump Won Iowa, Sanders Proves Socialism Okay

Nobody really wants to hear me say this, but I have to keep it SquareBiz for those of you who need it.

Trump won Iowa.

No really.

Trump won Iowa, and it wasn't even close.  Well, it was close, but not in the way that you think. Iowa is AS full of religious fundamentalism as any state in the union.  Not only is Iowa full of it (so to speak), it is full of religico's who are highly politically active as well- possibly more so than any other fundamentalist spot in America.

In other words, betting Ted Cruz to win in Iowa would have been a wasted bet in Vegas because you would have had to put down $3,000 just to win $100.  I just made up those odds, but you get my point.  Iowa chose Mike Huckabee two cycles ago, and Rick Santorum during the last presidential election primary/caucus season. because the Tea Party has owned Iowa for some time now.

Polls might have threatened to hand Iowa to Trump, but they didn't have a great way of knowing who would actually leave their home and caucus for Trump.

Now we know, and the numbers are staggering.

Cruz might have stopped Trump from finishing on top like he claims he always does, but he barely kept Iowa from shifting itself away from its religious roots and firmly into the area of social dissent with many other parts of the American electorate.

If there is any reason for Marco Rubio to be doing victory laps over a third place finish (and there is), Trump has just as much a cause for applause for finishing second in a place that his heathen arse should have never finished so high, but he did.

Without the benefit of a real ground game in a state that he knew would be a waste of money to fight in, Trump still came up second.  Cruz committed mightily to the outcome he got, and should also consider the Rubio result to be a considerable challenge to his evangelical claim over the GOP.  As for ground game, the same could be said for Clinton who had a representative in each of Iowa's 1681 democrat caucusing precincts.

Hillary and Cruz worked like crazy to insure the Iowa outcomes that they sorely needed.  Trump and Bernie Sanders will be hard to beat in New Hampshire, so a loss in Iowa too would have been a rough start for Hillary, too rough in fact for either to allow for such an outcome.  So she didn't lose, and neither did Cruz. 

But they almost did.

Did Cruz win by a wide enough margin to celebrate?

Rubio can feel happy about the large portions of Cruz's voters that had to be a part of the results he enjoyed last night.  Yet if Rubio has any legitimacy to his joy (and he does), than Trump and Sanders should be sipping champagne too.

From my perspective, they answered the question of how loud will the voice of the angry populist actually be in this upcoming election.  Will unusual voters show up to do something that they've rarely done before?


After our first sampling, it is clear that they will be pretty damn loud if we heard their voices all the way from fundamentalist Iowa. 

Pretty damn loud indeed.