In the News . . .

The Iraqi city of Mosul was finally liberated by the Iraqi army from the Islamic State, and the people of Iraq are justly celebrating.  But the fight isn't over yet: some pockets of Islamic State resistance remain just south of Mosul, and over in Syria, the Islamic State holds many square miles of land, as well as the city of Raqqa, the self-described capital of the group's declared "caliphate."  Nevertheless, Donald Trump will probably declare premature victory over the Islamic State, taking credit for a victory President Obama planned for when the Islamic State War began with the group's takeover of Mosul in 2014.   

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Jr. is in trouble over a failed attempt to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton just before she clinched the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.  It seems he met with a Russian attorney who said she had the goods on Hillary, only for the effort to come up leaving Don, Jr. empty-handed.

Donnie, that was dumb, really dumb! You shouldn't have risked potential violations of intentional law just to get some information to hurt the Democratic presidential nominee.

Besides, why go to some Russian lawyer for damaging information on Hillary when all you had to do to get information against her was watch the Democratic presidential debates?  :-p      

Solid As Granite

Mitt Romney's commanding victory in yesterday's New Hampshire primary - winning 39 percent of the vote - makes him the one to beat . . . for President Obama. It's become obvious that there really is no conservative alternative to a "moderate" Romney; Romney is the conservative alternative to the centrist incumbent President. Romney is opposed to an agenda that would impose a European-style social democratic system on America, but then, so is Obama.

With libertarian Ron Paul finishing a distant second in New Hampshire with 23 percent of the vote, mainstream arch-conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum hope instead to make inroads in South Carolina, where the unemployment rate and the intolerance for gays are both higher than in New Hampshire. Jon Huntsman's respectable third-place showing at 17 percent gives him reason to carry on. But Romney's ability to do better than expected in the Granite State- even after all of his recent gaffes marking him as a clueless CEO type - puts him on a clear path to the Republican presidential nomination and gives him more of an opportunity to hit the President south of the suspenders.

Romney can thank Florida for this victory, as Florida voted to have its primary on January 31, before the Iowa and New Hampshire contests scheduled for February - forcing both states to move their contests up to early January. Florida thus spared Romney of spending more time campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire and possibly seeing his numbers go down more over a longer period. Now he can spend more time than ever before focusing squarely on Obama and swat away the GOP also-rans like so many mosquitoes.

My advice to the Obama team: Start working on your Romney counterpunch.