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Author: Fuzzy Slippers

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Fuzzy Slippers

I am a constitutional conservative, a writer, and an editor.

Follow me on Twitter @fuzislippers

Mass migration into Europe has been notable for the heavy percentage of unaccompanied young males. Sweden has accepted among the highest percentage of such migrants relative to its population, causing not only a massive crime and sexual assault problem but also violent reaction from native Swedes. Due to the huge numbers of young males entering the country, Sweden now shows a greater imbalance between genders than does China. The BBC reports:

There is something odd going on with the ratio between boys and girls in Sweden. The latest estimates suggest there are 123 boys for every 100 girls among 16 and 17-year-olds. That's an even greater imbalance than in the same age group in China.

The natural "sex ratio at birth" is 105 boys for every 100 girls, according to the World Health Organization - and official statistics show that in 2014, there were 108 boys for every 100 girls among Sweden's 16 and 17-year-olds. But the country now has 123 boys for every 100 girls in this age group, according to Valerie Hudson of Texas A&M University.

In the wake of the news that Bernie Sanders' "free stuff for everyone" proposals will cost taxpayers $19.6 trillion in new taxes, Nancy Pelosi is distancing Democrats from his massive tax increases. The Hill reports:
Democrats are not on board with the tax hikes Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed to pay for his single-payer healthcare proposal, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday. "We're not running on any platform of raising taxes," Pelosi said during a press briefing to launch the Democrats' yearly issues conference in Baltimore, Md. "We do want to have a fairer tax system, and … we hope that we can do that this year."

Ted Cruz is intelligent, articulate, and well-prepared to defend and protect the Constitution as the next president of the United States.  He entered the national spotlight during his contentious 2012 run for the Senate, but it's worth taking a look at his resume because it highlights long-standing and staunch support of conservative principles.

Conservative Credentials: Pre-Senate Life and Career

Prior to winning that senate seat with conservative grassroots and TEA Party support and becoming the first Hispanic to serve as a senator from Texas, Cruz was also the first Hispanic—and the longest-serving person in Texas history—to hold the office of Solicitor General of Texas. Cruz joined the George W. Bush campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser and advised then-candidate and Governor Bush on a wide range of policy and legal matters, including civil justice, criminal justice, constitutional law, immigration, and government reform. During the Bush administration, Cruz served as associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ and as a policy adviser on the Federal Trade Commission.  While at the FTC, Cruz was an avid free-market crusader—an extension of his high school participation in the Houston-based Free Market Education Foundation, a program Cruz entered at the age of 13.

ISIS has reportedly released a video that confirms that the Paris terrorists trained in Syria; the video shows the men carrying out executions and reinforces the knowledge that they were not merely "inspired" by ISIS. The New York Times reports:

The Islamic State released a video on Sunday apparently showing footage of the men who carried out the November attacks in Paris while they were in Syria and Iraq, where they are pictured carrying out executions, including beheadings.

If the identities of all of the men in the video are confirmed, it would be the first evidence that the group that killed 130 people in coordinated attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 had been sent from the Islamic State’s base in Syria.

As the world's governments work to stop terrorist attacks before they happen, one group in the UK is accused of colluding with Islamist groups to undermine these efforts. The Telegraph reports:
Leaders and activists of Britain’s biggest teachers’ union are colluding with Islamic extremists to undermine policies aimed at preventing terror attacks. Private emails leaked to the Telegraph show that Rob Ferguson, a senior National Union of Teachers (NUT) activist in heavily-Muslim Newham, east London, is working with Mend, an extremist front group, and Cage, the notorious organisation which backed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) killer known as “Jihadi John”.
Apparently this union is working to ensure that the government's efforts to identify potential radicalization in young people is thwarted.

The refugee crisis in Europe is causing a huge number of problems for European governments and people, and now British "anarchists" from No Borders have traveled to Calais to incite refugees to violence. The Daily Mail reports:

British anarchists were among some 35 people under arrest in Calais on Sunday after leading a 'scandalous' invasion of the ferry port by some 500 migrants.

Not only did the thugs tear down security fences and threaten violence, but they also defaced a statue of France's wartime leader and former president Charles de Gaulle.

Masked agitators from the left-wing group No Borders were filmed during the trouble on Saturday afternoon as they tried to get people to the UK.

Apparently, the "anarchists" were attempting to force officials to allow the "migrants" to enter the UK.

The Mail continues:

Time's 2015 "Person of the Year" is facing increasing criticism for her handling of the Middle Eastern refugee crisis and her open borders policy. Now, in the wake of numerous assaults across Germany alone, including the New Year's Eve mass sexual assaults by immigrants in Cologne, and increasing crime and unease among the German people, the German government admits that it cannot account for 600,000 of the 1.1 million refugees Angela Merkel let flood into the country over the past year or so.

With Hillary's cratering poll numbers, the far left "feeling the Bern," and the right tearing itself apart over Trump and the other candidates, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly sees an opening and is seriously considering an independent run for president. The New York Times reports:

Michael R. Bloomberg has instructed advisers to draw up plans for a potential independent campaign in this year’s presidential race. His advisers and associates said he was galled by Donald J. Trump’s dominance of the Republican field, and troubled by Hillary Clinton’s stumbles and the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the Democratic side.

Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has in the past contemplated running for the White House on a third-party ticket, but always concluded he could not win. A confluence of unlikely events in the 2016 election, however, has given new impetus to his presidential aspirations.

Bloomberg is not only willing (and able) to spend $1 billion in his own money on his campaign, but he's also set a deadline for his decision for early March.

The NYT continues:

We've become accustomed to hearing from the increasingly shrill fringe left about the greedy evils of the top 1%.  However, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that Americans are a generous and charitable people . . . including the most wealthy among us. The Washington Examiner reports that of the world's charitable donations an entire third comes from America's top 1%.
Americans are a charitable group, in fact the most generous in the world, according to the new Almanac of American Philanthropy. In a first of its kind survey, the Almanac found that Americans out-donate Britain and Canada two-to-one and nations like Italy and Germany 20-to-one. What's more, more than half of every single income class except those earning less than $25,000 donate to charity. The much maligned top 1 percent in the U.S. economy fork over one third of all donations made. Even in death.

Last week, I noted that Bernie Sanders was reluctant to reveal how he intends to pay for everything for everyone; this week, the Washington Examiner has some answers. The Washington Examiner estimates that the bill for Bernie's "free stuff for everyone!" promises will be approximately $19.6 trillion.  Our national debt, which has nearly doubled under Obama, is under that at just over $18 trillion. Where's the money going to come from?  Taxes.  Of course. The Washington Examiner writes:
Sen. Bernie Sanders' populist message has put him in the position to potentially win Democratic nomination contests in both Iowa and New Hampshire, shaking the sense of inevitability that has surrounded Hillary Clinton. As the socialist senator from Vermont gains traction in polls, Clinton has more aggressively attacked his policy proposals, forcing Sanders to release details on how he would pay for his ambitious economic and social agenda.

As Donald Trump ramps up his attacks on Ted Cruz, the Washington Post is reporting that "The Republican establishment really, really doesn't like Ted Cruz."  This premise is nothing new to those of us who have been following Ted Cruz's career in the Senate and his presidential campaign, and to many serves as a feather in Cruz's cap.  The vitriol against him, though, is becoming quite pronounced . . . and not just from Trump. WaPo writes:
There's an assumption among casual consumers of politics that establishment Republicans loathe Donald Trump. Not really true.  Yes, they worry about what Trump might do downballot to the GOP if he is the nominee. But most view him with some mix of puzzlement and fascination. The Republican establishment saves its actual hatred for one man and one man only: Ted Cruz.
The evidence WaPo trots out is Iowa governor Terry "ethanol" Branstad.
Witness Terry Branstad, the four-term governor of Iowa and, without question, the face of the Republican establishment in the state. On Tuesday, he told reporters that he wants to see Cruz beaten in the Iowa caucuses in 13 days -- a remarkable admission by a sitting incumbent of such long standing.

Last year, George Stephanopoulos had a particularly antagonistic interview with the author of Clinton Cash, and shortly thereafter, it was revealed that he had donated a substantial sum of money to the Clinton FoundationABC stood by their man, though he did have to apologize on-air. The Washington Free Beacon is now reporting that Stephanopoulos has simply stopped disclosing his donations to the Clinton Foundation.
ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos has stopped disclosing his donations to the Clinton Foundation prior to his interviews with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Stephanopoulos interviewed Clinton twice over the past week, once Thursday morning on Good Morning America and again on Sunday’s This Week.

Despite his and his team's efforts, Rand Paul's presidential campaign has simply not taken off.  The global unrest and Islamic terrorist threat work against him in this cycle, and he's clearly shaken by how little support he has managed to acquire.  In addition to refusing to appear in the undercard debate, Rand is now taking a stand against Donald Trump. In an interview on The Alan Colmes Show, he vowed to spend his "every waking hour" to "try to stop Donald Trump." The Hill reports:
Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul on Thursday pleged to spend "every waking hour" trying to keep rival Donald Trump from winning the GOP nomination. "Donald Trump takes us in the wrong direction. He would be a disaster. We’ll be slaughtered in a landslide," Paul said in an interview on the Alan Colmes radio show, as first reported by BuzzFeed. "That’s why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee." "I think we, the Republican Party, becomes the party of angry people that insinuate that most immigrants are drug dealers or rapists, that’s a terrible direction for our party," he said.

Marco Rubio has taken a lot of heat for his work with Chuck Schumer and the Gang of Eight, so it's a bit surprising that only this morning he's arguing that illegal aliens can stay in the U.S. as long as they are not felons, specifically excluding the violation of our immigration laws. Politico reports:
Sen. Marco Rubio says people who immigrated to the U.S. illegally but haven’t committed any major crimes could be allowed to stay. In an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Florida contender for the Republican presidential nomination said felons shouldn’t be allowed to stay, but those who commit lesser crimes could still qualify. In this interview, he didn’t specify whether those allowed to stay would ever be able to become citizens. “If you’re a criminal alien, no, you can’t stay. If you’re someone that hasn’t been here for a very long time, you can’t stay,” he said. “I don’t think you’re gonna round up and deport 12 million people.”
The DC Caller has more:
Todd then asked Rubio, “Let me ask you on the 11 million [illegal immigrants already in America], are you still for finding a way for them to legally stay in the United States?”

Former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell was indicted back in January of 2014 for accepting gifts in exchange for political influence, and now the Supreme Court will be reviewing his case. The Washington Post reports:
The McDonnells, who were convicted in 2014, were accused of intervening with state officials on Williams’s behalf in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. The former governor was sentenced to two years in prison; Maureen McDonnell received a year and a day. . . . . The Supreme Court will decide whether former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell was rightly convicted of corruption for his efforts on behalf of a businessman who bestowed money and gifts on the governor and his family. The court announced Friday that it would intervene in the long-running saga of McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, and the case provides the justices a fresh opportunity to define what kind of political conduct crosses the line into criminal behavior.
McDonnell issued a statement in response to the Supreme Court's announcement.

Following the GOP debate, Professor Jacobson noted that it looks like a two person race between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, and not only is this view becoming a consensus but apparently Trump thinks so, too. Trump has taken to Twitter to rant and rave against Cruz. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/688327093214662657

For some reason, I thought "folk singers" went out with lava lamps, tie-dye, and patchouli, and though I know folk music has a long and proud tradition, I just can't shake the image of doped-out '60s hippies singing about peace at SDS and Weather Underground rallies . . . where domestic terrorism was often on the list of things to do. As it turns out, though, folk singing is alive and well; indeed, an Oregon folk singer is heading to Syria with the hopes of serenading ISIS into peaceful submission. It sounds like an Onion story, but Fox News reports:
James Twyman, of Portland, Ore., told FoxNews.com he feels a "calling" and believes he can soften the hearts of the Islamist army known for beheading Westerners, throwing gays off of buildings and summarily executing innocent women and children.

I'm not sure who thought "al Jazeera America" would be a good idea in the first place, but as many of us predicted, the network which began in 2013 just didn't catch on. In a sense it was doomed from the start because it began when its media group—al Jazeera Media Group owned by the Qatari government—bought Al Gore's embarrassingly unsuccessful Current TV.  Al Jazeera America also suffered a decided lack of enthusiasm in the American market. The ratings problem was so marked that when al Jazeera America managed to twice beat out MSNBC for two daytime hours, it was noteworthy and quite remarkable given how abysmal MSNBC's own numbers are.  As late as November of last year, al Jazeera was reorganizing and desirous of changing the network's image. Variety reported at the time:
The new chief of Al Jazeera America says the early-stage cable-news network is moving forward after a rocky launch that left the staff demoralized and prompted speculation that the Qatar-backed outlet might abandon its efforts to plant a flag in the United States. “There is a clear picture of where we are going to go,” said Al Anstey, who was named chief executive of the cable network in May. After supervising the operations of Al Jazeera English, Anstey replaced Ehab Al Shihabi, whose tenure overseeing the network was marked by the departures of some senior executives and a $15 million lawsuit from a former employee alleging that a senior executive was hostile to women and made remarks that could be construed as anti-Semitic.