What’s interesting in the news today?
1. CPAC finished up it’s annual conference over the weekend. The results from the conservative side of the Republican party are in, and their early favorite has emerged from a crowded pack.
From TheWashingtonTimes “Sen. Rand Paul demolished his competition in the 2014 Washington Times/CPAC presidential preference straw poll on Saturday, winning 31 percent of the vote — nearly three times the total of second-place Sen. Ted Cruz.”
“In the presidential poll, Mr. Cruz’s 11 percent was a big improvement for the freshman senator, who won just 4 percent in last year’s straw poll. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson was third with 9 percent and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was fourth with 8 percent in results that signal growing discontent with the GOP establishment in Washington.
Indeed, CPAC voters now have an unfavorable view of Republicans in Congress, with 51 percent saying they disapprove of the job the GOP is doing on Capitol Hill. Just last year the GOP had a 54 percent approval rating, and in 2012 they held a 70 percent approval rating.”
More here from the WT, with more of Paul’s speech.
Ted Cruz lays out his sweeping vision here, also via the WT.
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2. Putin is threatening economic sanctions of his own, while tightening his grip.
From TheTelegraph “Vladimir Putin has mocked diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine crisis as Russia threatened to disrupt European gas supplies by cutting off sales to Kiev over its unpaid debts.
The Russian president said through his official spokesman that, despite deep disagreements with the West, he did not want a confrontation over Ukraine to spiral into a “new cold war”.
Nevertheless Dmitry Peskov ridiculed Western demands for direct talks between the Kremlin and the new Kiev government, claiming that the loss of credibility involved “puts a smile on our face”.”
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3. Will the IRS investigate?
Good question. But no, they won’t.
From TheDailyCaller “The IRS still has not responded to allegations from a former Center for American Progress (CAP) employee that the left-wing think tank coordinates on editorial content with the White House — revelations that could threaten the organization’s nonprofit status.
Former ThinkProgress reporter Zaid Jilani wrote a piece this week detailing his experiences working for the liberal blog, which is run by CAP’s 501(c)(4) nonprofit Action Fund, the advocacy arm of White House counselor John Podesta’s think tank.”
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4. I’ll believe it when it actually happens.
From HotAir “On Wednesday, we found out the Big Reveal on whether or not Lois Lerner would be emptying the bag for Darrell Issa. Nope. So many perfectly good conspiracy theories flushed down the tubes after I went through two pots of coffee dreaming them up. It looked like a big, fat nothingburger and another dead end. But now, seemingly out of nowhere, the IRS seems to have had a change of heart.
The powerful House Ways and Means Committee will get everything from disgraced former IRS official Lois Lerner’s email account since a few weeks before Barack Obama became president.
And Republican committee members are hoping they’ll find a smoking gun tying the Obama administration to the years-long scheme to play political favorites with nonprofit groups’ tax-exemption applications.
After eight months of back-and-forth stonewalling, the IRS has agreed to turn over the complete contents of Lerner’s email account, along with other documents that two congressional committees have been demanding.”
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5. This last one is very sad. It’s unbelievable that this is allowed to continue.
From CNSNews “In New York City, 80% of the babies killed by abortion in 2012 were minorities: Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Blacks.
According to a “Pregnancy Outcomes” report published by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, there were a total 73,815 “induced terminations,” or abortions, in 2012 in the five boroughs that comprise New York City.
Among those abortions, 58,738 were of babies of minority race or ethnicity. That’s 79.57% of the total, or approximately 80% of all the abortions that year.”
The NYC Dept. of Health report is here, (See Pregnancy Outcomes NYC 2012.pdf)
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Wandering Views 
ISTM, that, in the name of consistency, those of us who considered freshman Senator Obama’a run for the presidency to be hubris should also be careful about any enthusiasm for freshman Senator Ted Cruz.
As for Dr. Carson, he may be a reasonable, fresh voice for conservatives, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has what it takes to be a president.
Former WMB commenter Kyle Ambrose is one of my Facebook friends. His posts & comments on politics & social issues are interesting & thought-provoking. Kyle is a Libertarian, & offers different views into the two-party system. He did some campaigning years ago for a Republican candidate, & his view into the workings of the Republican party was eye-opening, & turned him off of them.
If you’re interested in some more intellectual, thought-provoking posts & comments than the usual Facebook friends offer, try friending Kyle.
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So much for the claim that Ukraine is divided evenly into a Pro-Euro west and a pro-Russia east. Turns out that only 1/6th of the population is ethnically Russian and it is only in the Crimea that Russians make up 50% of the population. http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/crimean_war
The current events are eerily familiar to anyone who has studied the build-up to the last world war. Only this time, I doubt that any Western country has the political will or the economic resources to step up. Most are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, with rapidly shrinking populations. The few who might be willing risk enmeshing themselves in a conflict which would leave them crippled and vulnerable to other threats. China has expressed its support for Russia. There are two other rising economic powers who might be able to match them, India and Brazil, but neither would have much interest in the fate of a little known Eastern European country. It is sickening to think that history is on the brink of repeating itself.
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Roscuro, Obama and the Western Europeans are Neville Chamberlains, but Putin is no Hitler.
If I were a Ukranian, I would have mixed emotions. A close relationship with Western Europe would bring immediate financial benefits, but at the price of accepting Western culture with its materialism and perversion. Demographically, Western Europe is dying.
A close connection with Russian would limit economic growth in the short run, but might allow the people to escape the terrible culture of the West.
I am actually hopeful that Russia, China and India will work together to stop the West from spreading its moral depravity to other parts of the globe.
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I know 4 pastors who are spending the next 2 weeks in different parts of India preaching in open meetings and speaking in public schools. I am anxious to hear their reports.
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So what would the West fight for?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/10/what_would_the_west_fight_for_121865.html
If we are honest, we know there is one answer to that question. Putin knows the answer as well. Therefore, I expect him to take no actions against the homosexuals of Ukraine.
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Ricky, you say Putin is no Hitler. In what way? Of course, Putin has not released any raving manifesto blaming the Jews for all that is wrong in Russia, but skinheads are powerful enough to get away with gunning down those who prosecute them. He does not appear to have a band of brown shirts taking care of critics, but journalists who investigate government corruption are assassinated and opposition leaders are paralyzed through unproven criminal charges. He does not hold large rallies and give long harangues, but he nonetheless speaks of rebuilding what the Soviet Union once held. His very arguments that he is trying to protect the Russians in the Crimea sound a whole lot like Hitler’s reasons for annexing the Sudetenland with its German residents. I see no reason to believe that Putin will stop at the Crimea and leave the fertile breadbasket of the rest of Ukraine alone, any more than Hitler did to the rest of Czechoslovakia
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As for the question, what would the West be fighting for? What we fought for when the Nazis invaded Poland. The idea that one country could not simply walk into another country and take it over. That simple motivation was forgotten by the end of the war, as the Allies let Russia do exactly that, and we persuaded ourselves that the war was due to the sickening racism on display in Nazi Germany. The truth was that only rumours of those camps had ever reached the West in the build-up to the war and the more visible and socially acceptable racial purity methods of the Nazis in the 1930s had been widely hailed by eugenics and nationalist groups, both liberal and conservative, throughout the West, who also had their eye on those they considered undesirable in their countries. The putrid stench of the death camps deterred them, for a while. It is true that the West has little to offer in the way of economic or moral superiority, but then again, the 1920s and 30s were much more immoral than people realize, and there was that huge economic crash too. Putin is only better than Hitler in the sense that he much more sophisticated in his approach: http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/the_putin_enigma.
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Roscuro, In 2003 Little Bush and much of the West walked into Iraq and took it over. Not only did it set a bad precedent, it was idiotic since the only possible result of a democratically-governed Iraq was a Shia government allied with Iran. We also unleashed a bloodbath that still continues.
Ukraine violently ousted its democratically elected leader. Admittedly, he was a loser. Crimea has few historic ties to Ukraine and many to Russia. If you compare Putin’s actions to Little Bush’s, Putin’s were superior in a number of ways:
1 He was acting to protect the Russian majority in Crimea against a hostile, non elected government.
2. His actions are unlikely to destabilize an entire region.
3. He is unlikely to disband the police and army and leave the country in a state of anarchy as Little Bush did.
The West of 2014 is not the West of 1939. Its gods are money and perversion. The West is not morally superior to Putin.
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