Author: Patrick

Short Bio: I started blogging about politics in 2006, as a populist, skeptical left of center type, with a blog called simply, "The Populist."I suspect, but cannot prove; that my blog might have been hacked by some evil neoconservatives. I cannot prove that at all and also too, around the same time. Hackers from China where attacking wordpress blogs. I believe either the Neocons or the Chinese got my site. I don't know honestly know which.Either way, by 2007, I began to see that I really did not fit within the Democrat Party and liberal circles and after my blog was hacked; I created a blog called "Political Byline" and I kept writing; first as a Centrist and then as a Conservative PopulistFor my long bio, see the "About Me" section on this blog.

Thank God!: Rick Santorum is out of the 2016 race

I do not think that I can ever properly convey, how happy I am that this theocrat is out of the race to the White House.

The Video is at CNN and the story:

(CNN)Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is ending his presidential bid, two Republican sources told CNN.

He is expected to make the announcement Wednesday night and will endorse a candidate.

Santorum won the 2012 Iowa caucuses and ended that race with the second-most number of delegates to eventually GOP nominee Mitt Romney. But he was unable to capture any momentum this year, despite extensive barnstorming efforts in Iowa.

He is the third Republican presidential candidate to drop out after Monday’s caucuses. Mike Huckabee ended his campaign that night, and Rand Paul suspended his campaign Wednesday morning.

The Santorum sources did not say whom Santorum would endorse. When asked about a possible endorsement, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he hasn’t spoken to the former Pennsylvania senator on Wednesday.

“I think he’s fantastic,” Rubio told CNN’s Dana Bash.

Santorum faced a drastically different landscape this year than he did in 2012. A crowded field of 17 Republicans and lackluster early polling kept him off the main debate stage for each of the GOP debates. He also faced competition for the hearts evangelical voters, particularly from Ted Cruz.

See ya bye!

I think I should remind everyone about Santorum and some of his comments:

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and his defense of Government spending:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=441DKQU2EFw?rel=0

I’m glad he is out. Go back to serving the pope and leave the politics to the adults. One less Christian Statist and Christian Dominion buffoon. One down, one to go.

Others: Yahoo Politics, Vox, The Atlantic,  American Spectator, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Right Wing Watch,  The Stream, Mashable, Talking Points Memo, WBAY-TV, The Week and Outside the Beltway

Rand Paul calls it a day and goes home

Sad thing, but, I knew it was coming.

The Video is at CNN.

The Story via Politico:

Rand Paul dropped out of the 2016 president race on Wednesday, short on cash and support, two days after finishing with under 5 percent in the Iowa caucuses — less than one quarter of the support his father had drawn four years earlier.

The Kentucky senator, who pitched his libertarian-infused brand of conservatism as transformational for the Republican Party, will exit the national stage and instead run for reelection to the Senate. His moment in the 2016 campaign never materialized.

“Brushfires of Liberty were ignited, and those will carry on, as will I,” Paul said in a statement.

Paul told senior staff about his decision on Tuesday. Other staff were notified Tuesday evening and the entire Paul campaign was told via a conference call on Wednesday morning at about 8:45, according to a campaign source. In that call the Kentucky senator talked about smaller government, continuing his fight for “liberty” and the Fourth Amendment.

For months, Paul struggled to gain traction or garner attention in a race that has been dominated by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Paul hadn’t registered in double digits in any national poll since May, after he had led some surveys in 2014 and had been declared the “most interesting man” in Republican politics.

Paul had initially been viewed as a stronger contender than his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 on a narrow libertarian appeal. The younger Paul had hope to build on the libertarian grassroots base that had poured tens of millions of dollars into the elder Paul’s campaigns and expand it to more mainstream Republicans.

In the end, he was able to do neither.

Rand Paul’s biggest problem is that he is not his Father and because of that hardcore Ron Paul supporters are leery of him. Paul also tended to flip-flop a bit. He also was very anti-trump and that did not help him one bit.

Other Blogs: American Spectator, Advocate, Morning Consult, Shot in the Dark, Outside the Beltway, addictinginfo.org, Business Insider, CNN, Maryland Scramble, Vox Popoli and New York Times,

Microsoft to tally up caucus numbers

Drudge is promoting this one big time. Looks like Microsoft is helping out in Iowa.

Anyhow, here’s the story via the Hill:


Microsoft volunteered to provide the technology to help tally up the results of Iowa’s caucus, free of charge. Now it will be put to the test Monday night.

The contests in both parties are expected to go down to the wire. And the spotlight will be on precinct officials who have been trained on a new Microsoft app, which is meant to cut down on human error and speed up the reporting process.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties in Iowa have expressed strong confidence in Microsoft, dismissing late suspicion of corporate influence from the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) early last week.

Party officials have said no errors have been spotted in caucus dry runs. But the Sanders campaign has created its own backup reporting system, as has the Hillary Clinton campaign.

“It will be interesting to see what happens if and when there are discrepancies between the Microsoft system and either Democratic or Republican campaign tabulations,” Iowa State University professor Mack Shelley said.

Some would say that this smacks of corporate influence in elections. But, I really don’t see that, I mean, it would be worse. It could be the Government involvement. We all know what a disaster Mitt Romney had with that software he used. So, this might be a plus.

The 2016 Presidential Race Begins: Iowa caucuses are today

The first step of the 2016 election starts today.

Video:

The Story via Fox News:

As Iowans prepare to cast the first votes in the presidential nominating process Monday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hoped to defy the polls and pull off upset victories in Monday night’s caucuses.

After months of campaigning and more than $150 million spent on advertising, the race for supremacy in Iowa is close in both parties.

Among Republicans, the latest polls show real estate billionaire Donald Trump holding a slim edge over Cruz. Cruz, who became the first major candidate from either party to enter the presidential race 315 days ago, has pinned his hopes to a sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. Cruz has also modeled his campaign after past Iowa winners, visiting all of the state’s 99 counties and courting influential evangelical and conservative leaders.

“If you had told me 10 months ago that the day before the Iowa caucuses we’d be in a statistcal tie for first place I would have been thrilled and exhilarated,” Cruz told Fox News late Sunday.

The Republican caucus is also the first test of whether Trump can turn the legion of fans drawn to his plainspoken populism into voters. The scope of the billionaire’s organization in Iowa is a mystery, though Trump himself has intensified his campaign schedule during the final sprint, including a pair of rallies Monday.

I predict that Trump will come in first, with Cruz second and Rubio third on the Republican side. On the Democrat side, I think that one could be a surprise. Sanders has a good deal of support, while Hillary has the name and the money. So, that one is a toss. It will be interesting to see to say the least.

Possibly one of the funniest headlines I’ve read in a while.

When I saw this headline, I literally laughed out loud. 😆


OMG: NAACP leader uses F-word to apologize for using T-word after N-word meeting | The American Mirror

If you are anything like me, you most likely read that headline and went “huh?”

Well, here’s some of the story:

The NAACP’s mission of political correctness and equality careened off the rails this week when a local president complimented a TV reporters breasts during an interview.Don Harris, the president of the Maricopa County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had just finished an event at Tempe Union High School District to discuss an incident at the school in which several girls wore black t-shirts bearing the letters “N-I-*-*-E-R” on them.The outrage was instantaneous.“The six students in question pulled ranks to spell out NI**ER on their own, smiling gleefully to pose for an Instagram picture. Their punishment was 5-days suspension,” a petition demanding their expulsion reads, EAGnews reports.“This hurtful use of a racial slur is a complete disregard for the dignity of the black community in Arizona and across the nation and the punishment does not fit the total ignorance and cruelty of the crime.”Harris was on hand to accept apologizes and demand action.But after the meeting, while participants were speaking with the media, he was caught on camera saying Channel 12 reporter Monique Griego had “nice tits.”

Click the link above and read on, it gets worse. Ever hear of the term, “Stop digging!” Someone needs to tell this guy, to do so or better yet, just tell him to shut up. 😛

Bernie Sanders can hang it up, NYT endorses Hillary Clinton

I figured this was coming:

For the past painful year, the Republican presidential contenders have been bombarding Americans with empty propaganda slogans and competing, bizarrely, to present themselves as the least experienced person for the most important elected job in the world. Democratic primary voters, on the other hand, after a substantive debate over real issues, have the chance to nominate one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.

Hillary Clinton would be the first woman nominated by a major party. She served as a senator from a major state (New York) and as secretary of state — not to mention her experience on the national stage as first lady with her brilliant and flawed husband, President Bill Clinton. The Times editorial board has endorsed her three times for federal office — twice for Senate and once in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary — and is doing so again with confidence and enthusiasm.

Mrs. Clinton’s main opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, has proved to be more formidable than most people, including Mrs. Clinton, anticipated. He has brought income inequality and the lingering pain of the middle class to center stage and pushed Mrs. Clinton a bit more to the left than she might have gone on economic issues. Mr. Sanders has also surfaced important foreign policy questions, including the need for greater restraint in the use of military force.

In the end, though, Mr. Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers. His boldest proposals — to break up the banks and to start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system — have earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people. But his plans for achieving them aren’t realistic, while Mrs. Clinton has very good, and achievable, proposals in both areas.

The third Democratic contender, Martin O’Malley, is a personable and reasonable liberal who seems more suited for the jobs he has already had — governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore — than for president. Source: Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Nomination – The New York Times

It is basically over now for Barnie; the NYT carries a good deal of weight with the establishment left. I just do not see Barnie Sanders beating Clinton now.

Others: JustOneMinute, Politico, The Daily Caller, Advocate, Business Insider, The Slot, Mediaite, New York’s PIX11, The Week and Washington Post

Ted Cruz shows how not to win over caucuses

This is not very bright.

As Iowans prepare to head to the caucuses on Monday for the nation’s first votes in the presidential primaries, the campaigns are pulling out all the stops. The mailer sent out by one Republican campaign, however, might end up backfiring.Tom Hinkeldey, a resident of Alta, Iowa, tweeted a photo (which was later deleted because it included his personal address) on Friday evening of a mailer Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign sent addressed to his wife, Steffany. The mailer was a large card printed to look like a manila envelope on one side and was labeled in all capital letters, “ELECTION ALERT,” “VOTER VIOLATION,” “PUBLIC RECORD,” and “FURTHER ACTION NEEDED.” —  Source: He Said He Was An Undecided Iowan Until He Received This Controversial Mailer From Ted Cruz

Here is a picture of the said mailer:


Either way, it is not a good way to endure yourself to conservatives; who are pretty much against the Government knowing their business. I have to be honest, I highly doubt Trump would even do anything like that.

Others: The Last Refuge, BuzzFeed, CNN, The Libertarian Republic, Washington Monthly, BizPac Review, RedState, American Power, Althouse and Politico

Video: RANT! For Friday January 29, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHieWbiCLbE?rel=0

Links mentioned in Video:

USA Today: FBI releases video of shooting death of Oregon protester

HotAir.com: Oregon standoff ending exactly how it shouldn’t have

Brian Stelter / CNNMoney:Who won the ratings race: Fox News or Donald Trump?
Ted Cruz / Yahoo Politics: Ted Cruz threatened to leave the debate after a ‘mean question’

Tucker Carlson / Politico: Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right

Daniel Strauss / Politico: Trump: ‘Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada’

Erica Garner / Washington Post:Black lives like my father’s should matter.  That’s why I’m endorsing Bernie Sanders.

Erik Wemple / Washington Post: Politico implodes

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post: Massive Shakeup At Politico With Co-Founder Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen Set To Leave

Hadas Gold / Politico: A memo from POLITICO’s founder and publisher Robert Allbritton

William Grimes / New York Times: Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane Dies at 74

Aidin Vaziri / San Francisco Chronicle: Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner dies

Three important videos about the #oregonstandoff

These are very important to watch. This is a guy who was at the traffic stop up in Oregon. (Via Raw Story)

The reason why I am posting these, is because there are some people out there, who are reporting bad information on the internet about this event. This should set the record straight.

https://youtu.be/CWwc2RiEuPE

https://youtu.be/aP-b6_X4M4k

https://youtu.be/kybOTwsGkPk

Others: Jawa Report