Politics

Despite dropping in late polls, Cruz used his superior campaign organization to storm back and take the Iowa caucuses by a decent margin. If a Cruz win seems somewhat anticlimactic at this point, that’s only because he had been doing very well in the state for several weeks until his slump in late January. Trump’s equally unimpressive ground game left him with the second-place finish that he was poised to have a couple weeks ago, and that happened in spite of a huge increase in turnout that was supposed to help him.

Submitted by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

On a daily basis, I receive emails from associates in the UK and Europe that speak of the sheer madness of allowing refugees in the millions to pour into Europe. The riot in Cologne, Germany, by some 1,000 men who sexually assaulted 90 women, and robbed and threatened others, offers insight as to the scale of riots that we may expect to see in the future.

Update: The first votes are starting to trickle in and with Ted Cruz and Trump jockeying for the top spot. Clinton is still leading Sanders, although the race is close, as expected. 

Update: As shown below, turnout is topping all expectations on both the Democratic and Republican sides. That should bode well for Trump and perhaps for Sanders, although the number of first time caucus goers is apparently lower than the Sanders campaign would have liked.

In a stunning finding, moments ago Gallup reported that as voting begins in the 2016 presidential primary, suddenly Bernie Sanders, once seen as a long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination, has the edge over Hillary Clinton in net favorability among U.S. adults who identify or lean Democratic.

For the two-week rolling average spanning Jan. 18-31, Sanders has a net favorable score of +53 - tied for his highest reading since Gallup began tracking candidates' images in early July of last year. Clinton, long the leader in the popularity metric, has a score of +49.

Russia have obtained video evidence showing the Turkish military bombing Syrian civilians from Turkish border posts.  Major General Igor Konashenkov has demanded an immediate explanation from NATO, Turkey and the Pentagon on the incident on Monday. Farsnews.com reports: Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov demonstrated the video depicting a part of the Syrian-Turkish border during the press-conference. “This facility is a Turkish border outpost, which did not have any firing points a few months ago,” he said.