Democratic ‘Face Off’ In Iowa

Democratic presidential candidates were in Iowa for the first face-off of the 2016 primary, a contest that remains dominated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, writes the Vermont publication Times Argus.  The event took place on Friday, according to the Kansas City Star.

Besides Hillary Clinton, the forum included Senator Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Governor (and mayor of Baltimore) Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee. Each candidate will deliver 15 minutes of remarks.

All five Democratic primary candidates were on the program for a dinnertime fundraiser sponsored by the state party in Cedar Rapids, creating an opportunity for her challengers to confront Clinton before more than 1,200 influential party activists in the crucial caucus state.

Three months into what seems like an “all-but-inexorable” march to the nomination, Clinton has already built a vast campaign infrastructure, establishing a multistory headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and placing hundreds of staffers across the country, according to Times Argus.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released this week found her standing falling among Democrats, with about 70 percent of Democrats giving Clinton positive marks, an 11-point drop from an April survey. Nearly a quarter of Democrats now say they see Clinton in an unfavorable light.

“I don’t like seeing that, obviously,” Clinton said of the poll, speaking to reporters on Thursday. “But I think people know that I will fight for them. I’ll fight for their jobs, I’ll fight for their families, I’ll fight on behalf of better education and health care.”

She added: “I’m very pleased with the support I have.”

Just 17 percent of the $47 million that Clinton has raised since announcing her campaign came from contributions of $200 or less. In comparison, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has fueled his insurgent challenge to Clinton with small donations, pulling in three-quarters of his more than $15.2 million haul from smaller amounts.

In recent weeks, Sanders has filled arenas with voters eager to hear the message of the self-described “socialist,” who’s become Clinton’s chief rival.

So far, he’s refused to directly criticize Clinton, though he’s questioned her positions on issues like trade, Wall Street regulations and the Keystone XL pipeline.

“I like her. I respect her,” Sanders said on Tuesday, after joining his fellow Senate Democrats at a luncheon with Clinton on Capitol Hill. “It is not necessary for people to dislike each other or attack each other just because they’re running for office.”

(Updated report)

http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article27472261.html

Security Guard Fired; Comes Back, Shoots Employee In Back

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According to Raw Story, an Iowa security guard – with a Facebook account loaded with open-carry and right-wing memes and photos of multiple weapons – is under arrest for shooting and killing a fellow mall worker after she filed sexual harassment complaints against him. A later report stated that the man was fired from his job before the shooting took place.

According to The Gazette newspaper, the man, Alex Kozak, was taken into custody after shooting 20-year-old Andrea Farrington three times in the back while she was at work at the Iowa Children’s Museum in the Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, Iowa.

Police say that the 22-year-old Kozak left the mall, retrieved a 9mm Glock handgun from his home, and then returned to shoot Farrington late Friday night, writes Raw Story.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/iowa-open-carry-nut-gunned-down-mall-worker-who-filed-sexual-harassment-complaints-against-him/

http://samuel-warde.com/2015/06/20-year-old-women-gunned-down-by-mall-cop/

http://thegazette.com/man-in-mall-shooting-returned-with-gun-20150614

Rick Santorum Upset At Fox News Debate Process

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Rick Santorum recently announced that he would be running for President under the GOP ticket.  Recently, Fox News announced that its Republican presidential primary debate in August would include only the 10 candidates polling the highest in national surveys. After the announcement, Rick Santorum denounced the criteria, according to The New York Times.

“In January of 2012, I was at 4 percent in the national polls, and I won the Iowa caucuses,” said Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, who is now near the bottom of most national surveys.

Fox News announced Thursday that the debate competitors would be determined by averaging their last five major national polls.  The top 10 competitors will be allowed to debate.  The field could expand to 11 if there’s a tie for 10th, according to CBS News.

Santorum’s concern may be legitimate.  The situation is reminiscent of Ron Paul in 2012.  Paul was excluded from the first Fox debate that year although he performed well in some polls.  The 2011 Straw Poll showed that Ron Paul was a legitimate candidate in Iowa.  Paul finished second.  Paul finished third in the caucuses with 21 percent of the vote, according to the publication The Iowa Republican.  Paul also placed first in a Fox News poll, but Fox changed the location of the poll on their website to an area difficult to find, writes RT.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/10-completely-vile-things-rick-santorum-has-said-20150528?page=2

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/politics/rick-santorum-2016-campaign-focus/

http://theiowarepublican.com/2015/fact-check-has-the-iowa-straw-has-been-an-accurate-indicator-of-success/

http://theiowarepublican.com/2015/fact-check-has-the-iowa-straw-has-been-an-accurate-indicator-of-success/

Clinton Says She Supports Amendment To Get Money Out Of Politics

NPR claims that Hillary Clinton has said she supports the idea of a constitutional amendment to restrict or eliminate big money in politics.  But will she “walk the walk?”

The notion of amending the Constitution has been discussed for decades, but Clinton is joining a new, if small, chorus of prominent politicians who are mentioning it.

“We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccounted money out of it, once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment,” she said at a roundtable discussion at Kirkwood Community College near Monticello, Iowa.

Campaign finance reform is one of four pillars, “four big fights,” of her campaign, she said, along with help for families and communities; a stronger, more balanced economy; and a strong national defense.

Clinton’s Iowa Schedule

Tuesday and Wednesday, Hillary Clinton is tooling around Iowa, apparently in a black van.

She will do small events and private meetings during a two-day Iowa swing Tuesday and Wednesday, campaign aides told The Iowa Des Moines Register Sunday.

Just two events were announced: She’ll do an educational roundtable at a branch campus of Kirkwood Community College near the town of Monticello and do a business roundtable at Capital City Fruit in Norwalk, a small town just south of Des Moines.

Neither event will be open to the public, and there will be limited access to the news media, stated the Des Moines Register.

“It will be the first of many conversations with Iowans about how to make the economy work so everyday Americans and their families can actually get ahead and stay ahead,” said Lily Adams, the Clinton campaign’s Iowa spokeswoman.

Tuesday at 1:15 p.m.:  Roundtable with students and educators and tour the Kirkwood Community College’s Jones County Regional Center, south of Monticello.

11:45 a.m. on Wednesday: Tour of Capital City Fruit, a small family-owned business in Norwalk, and meet the company’s employees. Then she’ll do a roundtable with members of the small-business community.

(Updated report)

The Iowa ‘Freedom Summit’

Last Saturday, at a Victorian theater in Des Moines, Iowa, at least eight likely Republican candidates for president met to talk to conservative activists.

The event highlighted the party’s challenge: to find a candidate who can win the loyalty of the grassroots base without moving too far to the right and jeopardizing the GOP’s chances of victory in the general election.

Theoretically, it could be a good place for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

If he didn’t have so many troubles at home.

Those include investigations into purposely causing a multi-day traffic jam in the town of a mayor he didn’t like, misuse of Hurricane Sandy relief aid, and improper use of bondholders’ funds by the Port Authority.

Party strategists and candidates remember well the lessons of Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 campaign, when he was trapped by his efforts to establish conservative bona fides, at one point calling himself “severely conservative.”

The Iowa Freedom Summit brought together more than 1,000 conservative activists, many of them sought-after for the Iowa caucuses.  The first votes for the GOP nomination will be cast just over a year from now.

The event was sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), a hard-line voice against immigration reform and on other issues, along with the conservative group Citizens United.

According to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic national chairwoman who held a news conference before the event, the gathering was “an extremist ring-kissing summit masquerading as a political forum.”

Right-wingers expressed their views at the forum.

America is “mired in darkness,” said David Bossie, head of Citizens United and a conservative filmmaker who organized the event.

Conservative talk-show host Jan Mickelson began the event by saying that Iowa conservatives were not anti-immigrant, but “what we do care about is illegal gate crashers.”

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called Obama “an overgrown little boy” for his executive order last year allowing some undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

The likely candidates, besides Christie, included former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, neurosurgeon/pundit Ben Carson, and former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Carly Fiorina.

Amazingly, in a move appearing to defy time, Ted Cruz managed to show up the next day at the Koch Brothers’ right-wing forum in Palm Springs, California.

Heavyweight contenders Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney were not at the Iowa summit.

Christie told the audience that he shared its political values, deriding the “conventional wisdom” that says he’s too moderate for the state that will cast the first votes in the 2016 Republican presidential race.

Christie also cited his two wins in heavily Democratic New Jersey as evidence that Republicans do not have to abandon a “belief in the sanctity of human life” to win in blue states.  He also stressed the need to seek voters everywhere.

“We need a coalition that covers all parts of the country – all ethnicities,” said Christie.

Some in attendance worried that Christie would reach across the aisle. John Graves, 45, of Bluegrass, Iowa, said that Christie’s talk of being able to work with Democrats in New Jersey worried him. He said he would rather have a nominee who stands up for conservative principles rather than rushing to compromise.

There were other conservative stars – Palin, who told reporters in the Des Moines Marriott lobby Friday night she was “seriously interested” in considering a 2016 run; and real estate mogul Donald Trump, who continued his seemingly quadrennial flirtation with a White House campaign.

Rick Santorum seemed to have his parties mixed up and said the GOP should focus less on the investor and business-owning classes and speak to the anxieties of middle-class Americans.

“We need to be the party of the worker,” he said.

“People are more motivated than I’ve seen since 1980,” said Steve Scheffler, Iowa’s Republican national committeeman and president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group of religious conservatives.

“They are concerned that another Obama-like administration will lead to the destruction of our country and our republic,” Scheffler said.

He said that Christie, even if he does not get overwhelming support at first from social conservatives, helped his cause Saturday. “It sends the message that he cares what conservatives think; it sows the seeds of goodwill,” Scheffler said.

Trump brought roars from the crowd when he said the two biggest establishment names were not viable.

“It can’t be Mitt, because Mitt ran and failed,” Trump shouted above cheers. “Something happened to him near the end of the election, which was so winnable. He choked.” He noted that Bush favors a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and supports national “common core” education. “The last thing we need is another Bush,” Trump said.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150125_Christie_and_a_crowded_field_address_conservatives_in_Iowa.html#ucOi9pHkxU3AshQj.99

GOP Mailer Intimidates & Threatens To Out Liberals

The Republican Party in Iowa sent out flyers to people reading “Notice: all voting is public,” and attempted to convince the reader that people who did not vote for the GOP would be outed and revealed.

The ad tell voters that “In a few months, Iowa will release the list of individual who voted in this election.” Most troublingly, the ad includes an aerial view of a neighborhood with checkmarks indicating that “These People Voted GOP.”

Long story short, it seemed like an attempt to bully people into voting for the GOP.

While information on who voted is public, how a person voted, including what party they voted for, is not.

Cenk Uygur discusses it.

Man In Iowa With Terminal Cancer Gets Busted For Medical Marijuana

A man in Iowa with terminal cancer gets busted for having medical marijuana. TYT video.