I admit it. There are certain things I just don’t like. Make me ride on a roller coaster and I’ll throw up! Feed me cottage cheese and I’ll throw up! I will not sit through a horror movie. I will not ride a motorcycle. I will not go to an acid rock concert. I will not run a marathon. I refuse to learn to ski or bungee jump. I will not pitch in the World Series. I don’t like to be wakened even to music. I will never read a technical journal. And this one may surprise you, I don’t like German chocolate cake. Now, you may like all of these things and done them. There is no accounting for taste, even my own. Oh, and there’s something else I will never do. I will never vote for Hillary Clinton as president, and I’m going to tell you why. But before I do, let me apologize immediately to those who might be Hillary Clinton fans who are watching. You are entitled to your vote and I will defend you all the way to the ballot box so that you can cast it. But before I sound like I’m going on a tirade, here’s a quote from the very liberal New York Times.
In an article called “The Women Who Should Love Hillary Clinton” writer Gail Sheehy wrote about the former Secretary of State who “has always counted on women of her generation as a rock–solid base. But ambivalence is seeping in about her authenticity and the power of her symbolism as a woman. Among those unlikable’s consistently repeated to me by women who are conflicted about her: not authentic; can’t trust her; she lies; she’s establishment; she’s a hawk.”
The facts are that in July 2015, Hillary Clinton, being a woman, was winning her big points. As the New York Times story reported, in that month, 71% of women voters who leaned Democrat said that they were likely to cast ballots for her when the time came. But by September, her support from the same female voters had dropped by nearly 30 points, largely due to how she handled her emails as Secretary of State and deep concerns about her honesty.
The Nation.com, a left-leaning online website that usually supports Hillary over Bernie Sanders, two weeks ago, specifically on February 10, published an article by author Michelle Alexander titled “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote: From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted – and Hillary Clinton supported – decimated black America.” In it Michelle wrote “Hillary Clinton’s support for the 1994 crime bill, for example…used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. Hillary said “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super–predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel."”
Black Lives Matter broke into one of Hillary’s speeches in Atlanta, Georgia, last October. They earlier had unsuccessfully tried to crash into Hillary’s speech on August 11, 2015, in Keene, New Hampshire. Black Lives Matter tweeted six days later “Hillary Rodham Clinton lobbied to expand the drug war and mass incarceration in ways that still impact black and brown people today. As of today, the platform on her website still calls for ‘restoring balance’ to the criminal justice system.”
Black lives do matter, but it’s not just Afro-Americans who are beginning to see through the thin veneer of Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump stopped Hillary’s attack on him as Trump being “anti-woman” by pointing out that it is Bill who is the womanizer and the she was like an attack-dog with any woman who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. Kathleen Wiley, one of Bill’s victims, has said that she intends to appear at every Hillary Clinton campaign event if Hillary wins the Democratic Party’s nomination. She has said several times “Hillary Clinton will have to have me shot to stop me. I’m determined to tell the truth about the Clintons as sexual predators, and I’m not in fear of losing my life. Wiley’s book Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton” tells of the Chicago mob-style threats by Clinton operatives to make her stay silent. Now, Wiley and her supporters have filed with the Federal Committee the Rape Account Project for EDUCATION PAC which is usually shortened to “Rape PAC,” with a project called “Women vs. Hillary.” Wiley calls Bill and Hillary serial sexual predators.
In 2007, WND reported a private investigator admitted that he was hired by Hillary Clinton to investigate Wiley, and that he bore responsibility for acts of harassment and intimidation that were designed to silence her. Wiley said she was threatened by a “mysterious jogger” just two days before she testified in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Kathleen said “I went over the edge first when that jogger threatened my children, mentioning them by name and where they lived. Any mother or grandmother like Hillary who would threaten another woman’s children is as low as a person can get.” She added “Only women can defeat Hillary Clinton.”
From Hillary’s millions given to her by the Communist George Soros; another voice that’s about to speak – Gennifer Flowers; Hillary shouting at President Obama with the words “Call off your f (censored) dogs!”; I could say so much more, but that should be sufficient to let you know why I would never vote for Hillary. If she is nominated, I will say much more about her. I am not a scandal monger nor her judge, or Bill’s judge either. I have presented facts, but it is your place to vote for whomever you choose. To me, Bill and Hillary Clinton are enigmas. To you, they may be the most fascinating couple in the world. They are fascinating to me too, but for a totally different reason. I think, “How can two people with reputations of being serial sexual predators; financial gangsters who have gathered millions of dollars from our enemy nations for their piggy bank called The Clinton Foundation; who are known to be liars from Benghazi to her emails; even be considered a woman other women would want Hillary Clinton as your role model? As the first woman President?
This is Ray Mossholder from the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, with Campaign 2016. I’ll next feature John Kasich and ask “Do we really want a deeply committed politician of many many years in the White House this time?”
The story is told of a presidential candidate in the 1800s who went by train to give a speech to a Native American tribe. When the train stopped at a reservation, the candidate got off and stood before more than a thousand tribal chiefs. He began his speech by thanking all of them for assembling. Then he said “If I receive your vote for president, I will replace all your horses with the finest of Arabian stallions.” Every chief responded with a loud cry of “Oompa! Oompa!” Next the candidate said “And if you vote for me to be president, I will move you from this reservation with absolutely no cost to you and give you the territory of Wyoming.” Still once again came the crys “Oompa! Oompa!” The candidate was greatly encouraged and continued “And if I receive your vote, I promise to give every one of your children a four-year university education completely paid for by the United States government.” Again he heard “Oompa! Oompa!” But the candidate wasn’t done. He went on and on with promises of everything from turning their teepees into the finest homes, to giving each one of them their own private train that was finer than the train he was riding on. Finally, the candidate’s speech was over and after he again profusely thanked the chiefs and urged them to vote for him, he walked back to the campaign train with the chief who had invited him. Just before the candidate stepped onto the train, that chief looked down on the ground, turned to him and said “Don’t step in the Oompa!”
But now, let’s take that story one step further. Suppose the candidate had been completely sincere. He fully meant every word he said, and he was elected president by 898 votes over the second-place finisher. He had kept in touch with those chiefs and realized that without one exception, they had voted for him. So, he began to give them what he’d promised – a thousand of the finest Arabian stallions; building crews replaced teepees with beautiful homes; every child on every reservation was given a government grant for four years completely free in the University of their choice. He fulfilled all the other promises he’d made – an 1800’s–style Disney World in the Wyoming territory with admission free for all the Native Americans; the most modern fixtures inside their homes; an all expense paid trip to the White House for a conference on Native American needs and desires every year. The list was much longer than that and the president completely fulfilled it. The chiefs were ecstatically happy until one awful day when the United States government went bankrupt.
That candidate in 2016 is Bernie Sanders. I believe he is sincere. But this Independent Virginia Senator only last year joined the Democratic Party so that he could be considered a viable candidate. He well knows third-party candidates can’t win the presidency. So the question is “What does Bernie Sanders mean when he calls himself a ‘Democrat Socialist?"”
It was at a speech he gave at Georgetown University where he directly answered that question. Here are his own words “I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own their means of production. But I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America, deserve a decent standard of living, and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad. When I use the word socialist, and I know some people are uncomfortable with it, I am saying it is imperative that we create a political revolution, that we get millions of people involved in the political process and we create a government that works for the many, not the few.” In many ways that sounds like a speech Donald Trump might make. But let’s look at the specifics. What is Bernie Sander’s platform? It is certainly different than Donald Trump’s or any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, in the current 2016 race. What is Bernie Sanders specifically promising us if he is elected?
Make no mistake, Bernie Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, is both a lover and a fighter. His smile is as big as Texas. Even though he is from Flatbush in the Bronx and sounds like it, he has been a Vermont Independent in Congress for 24 years. He’s been both in the House of Representatives and the Senate and he’s used to winning.
When Bernie Sanders speaks he is like a machine gun rat–tat–tatting out a list of America’s greatest problems. Here are just a few, and these are all facts: “Did you know that 425,000 public new school teachers could be hired by the amount the top 25 hedge–fund managers in this country make?” Or, “Despite the modern gains of the Affordable Care Act, 40 million citizens have no health insurance.” Or, “There are more people in poverty in America right now then at anytime in the history of our country.” “America has 91 million who are unemployed right now.” “America once led the world in building and maintaining a nationwide network of safe and reliable bridges and roads. Today, nearly a quarter of the nations 600,000 bridges have been designated as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Almost 1/3 of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition.” Then “Nothing of that is going to change as long as America’s voters stay home. In our last election, 60% of the people didn’t vote; 75% of low income people didn’t vote; 80% of people between eighteen and twenty-one didn’t vote. The American people care more about Tom Brady’s arm than they do about our disastrous trade policies, NAFTA, CAFTA, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. ISIS. Serious issues. And what the government doesn’t want you to think about is what’s happened to the American middle class.”
While in Flatbush, Bernie attended the same high school Chuck Schumer attended. Bernie says “My father was a worker. He came here in 1917 without a penny and didn’t speak English. My mother wanted a house, but he couldn’t provide that. Yet they managed to send me and my brother to college. I suspect that they voted Democrat, but it wasn’t ever anything that they discussed. It was only after leaving Brooklyn family to attend the University of Chicago at the same time the civil rights movement hit, that I became politically aware. I began marching and protesting. And in the mid-60s, I lived on a kibbutz in Israel for six months.
He came to Vermont in 1968. Here’s how he describes himself then: “My hair was long, but not long for the times. I smoked marijuana, but was never part of the drug culture. That wasn’t me. I instantly fell in love with Vermont. To this day, I’ve never once heard anyone cursing in the grocery store.”
In 1971, a friend of his invited him to a meeting of the leftist Liberty Union Party. It was just beginning. Bernie says “I stood up and said a few words. I can’t remember at all what I said. Two hours later, I was a candidate for the United States Senate! I had a $200 car and went out to campaign. The Liberty Union Party was tiny and had no money. Still, I was allowed to be part of the debates. I was on the radio, interviewed in the newspapers, and actually taken seriously. Could you imagine that happening today?” Then in 1989, as the West was on the verge of winning the Cold War, Sanders addressed the national conference of the US Peace Council – a known front for the Communist Party USA, whose members swore an oath not only to the Soviet Union, but to “the triumph of Soviet power in the United States.”
Sanders ran as a socialist and got 2% the first time. The second time he ran, he got 4%. He left the socialist Liberty Union Party to become an Independent. That’s when he ran for mayor of Burlington and won in what the newspapers called “a nasty standoff”. Bernie beat five–term incumbent Gordon Paquette by ten votes! Since then, he’s been a member of Congress for twenty-four years; his first years in the House of Representatives, and the years since in the Senate.
All this time, Bernie Sanders has been enamored with two communist nations. Sanders wrote in 1985 “In 1961, America invaded Cuba, and everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world. America believed all the Cuban people were going to rise up in a rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that it was Castro who educated their kids, gave their kids healthcare, and totally transformed society.” In 1989, Bernie and his wife went to Cuba with the hopes of meeting Fidel Castro but Castro was too busy to see them.
Bernie Sanders also loves the Soviet Union. And he loves the memory of Eugene Debs, who was a great believer in communism, though he continued to call what he believed “socialism”. The New York Post’s Paul Sperry wrote “Sanders also adopted a Soviet sister city outside Moscow and honeymooned with his second wife in the USSR. He put up a Soviet flag in his office, shocking even the Birkenstock–wearing local liberals. At that time, the Evil Empire was on the march around the world and threatening the United States with nuclear annihilation.
So, with Bernie’s rags to riches story with quite a bit of red thrown in, everybody in Vermont must love him. Right? A large part of Vermont-ites do, but not everybody does. He has some personal faults that continue to be pointed out by his critics. They say he is inflexible with an attitude of “I–am–right–and–everyone–else–is–wrong” that turns them away. According to New York Magazine, a commonly heard phrase by those who know him best is “Bernie Sanders is a man of the people who doesn’t particularly like people.” He can be a real grump. Still, most people in Vermont would say “He’s our grump!”
When we begin to look at the things that Bernie Sanders advocates, he certainly doesn’t look like the Grinch. Here’s a quick review:
1. Spreading the wealth around: In April 2015, here is what the Associated Press wrote about the problem Bernie Sanders wants to solve – “What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels. This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful. It is not working for ordinary Americans….You know this country shouldn’t just belong to a handful of billionaires.” In July 2015, Sanders introduced legislation that would incrementally increase the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour by the year 2020.
2. Changing the tax structure: Bernie Sanders would repeal some of the tax deductions that benefit hedge funds and corporations, and would raise taxes on capital gains and the wealthiest 1% of Americans. The wealthy would pay a 90% tax rate (a rate that last existed during the years directly following World War II).
3. Breaking up the big banks: Bernie believes our present banking system is in great danger because even one of their collapses would create a global financial earthquake. He wants to prevent any financial institution from acting as both a securities firm and a commercial bank.
4. Medicare For All: Medicare is the American government’s largest budget item, costing 824.8 billion dollars per annum. Even with the limited amount of Americans who are on Medicare today, Medicare is is facing a 43 trillion dollar debt in unfunded liabilities, and it denies healthcare claims at a higher rate than any private insurer. Financial experts say that just that one promise, Medicare to every American, would bankrupt America soon.
5. Four years of college for every student FREE. With student loans hanging on like an embarrassing and terribly unwanted tail year after year until some former students reach the age of fifty or so, Bernie calls student debt “indentured servitude”. But here’s the realistic catch: four years of free college would cost America an estimated 70 billion dollars every year. Remember that when the government says that they will pay for anything, they really mean the taxpayer will pay for it. With the need of 70 billion extra dollars in government coffers every year, how much strain would that put on your taxes?
6. The prosecution of “climate deniers.” Sanders and Al Gore are like Siamese twins. Both have called for the prosecution of climate change skeptics. Here’s what sits on Bernie Sanders website: “Bring climate deniers to justice so we can aggressively tackle climate change. It is an embarrassment that Republican politicians, with few exceptions, refuse to even recognize the reality of climate change, let alone be prepared to do anything about it. The reality is that the fossil fuel industry is to blame for much of the climate change skepticism in America.” With that statement, Bernie has called for the Department of Justice to investigate Exxon Mobil who has spent millions of dollars to spread doubt about the causes and impacts of burning fossil fuels.
Those are just a few of the major stances Bernie Sanders has been taking. To check on his other positions go to berniesanders.com
Super Tuesday is just two days away. 11 states will be voting. Hillary literally wiped Bernie out tonight – 73% to 26%, winning 90% of the black vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Political pundits say it’s not looking good for Bernie heading into Tuesday and that her win tonight will give her great momentum with voters from other states. The polls are saying the same. Nearly half the delegate votes will be decided by Tuesday evening. But Bernie is forever the optimist. He says “That means there are still more than half of the delegates who are yet to decide. I look for a good Tuesday, but I’ll be going strongly after all the of the other delegates from Wednesday on.”
Like having steak, lobster, caviar, and three bottles of eighty-year-old wine at the most elegant restaurant in the world, unless you are already a multimillionaire, you might just faint when the maître d’ brings you the bill. Because it’s time to add up all of the things that Bernie Sanders wants “free” for all Americans. His proposals would cost you, the taxpayer – get ready for this – 19.6 trillion dollars in tax increases over the next ten years. America’s national debt this moment is nearly 20 trillion dollars. So, realistically, America will go bankrupt as a nation long before those ten years under Bernie Sanders plans. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t step in the oompa!
You decide who you are going to vote for.
This is Ray Mossholder from the Reach More Now news desk in Fort Worth, Texas, with Campaign 2016. My next op-ed piece that will be found on Reach More Now.com and Reach More Now YouTube will be “Should Hillary Clinton be the first woman president of the United States?” Watch for it.
11. To all the words people told you about yourself that made you love yourself a little less.
Romans 12:3 (Amplified) For by the grace (unmerited favor of God) given to me I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought [not to have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance], but to rate his ability with sober judgment, each according to the degree of faith apportioned by God to him.
Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
Mark 12:30–31 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a]31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.”
2 Corinthians 5:20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us; we (as Christ’s representatives) plead with you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: Is Ted Cruz a liar?
Its as if we were on a playground. That’s where you hear things like “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” or “How do you know when that kid’s lying? His lips are moving!” And in the Republican debates and in this year’s Democrat debates, these are statements that were very close to being used by each of the candidates. In a real sense they have said them with different words.
Because of his outspoken lack of political correctness, of all the candidates it’s Donald Trump, whether he becomes our president or not, who will be most remembered for his verbal attacks on Ted Cruz. When an adult calls someone else a liar in front of millions of people, (like the many millions watching the Republican debates over television), it is shocking and reminds me of that playground.
But what if it’s true? What if the one being accused IS lying? Shouldn’t America’s voters know that? We the people will soon be voting in primaries, if we haven’t already, and then in the general election. If a candidate has a regular pattern of lying, wouldn’t it be important for you to know that? Does honesty matter to you, most especially in a president?
At this point I can hear someone say, “Politicians are crooks who are in politics for the money they can make. They all lie.” And I would respond “Some lie far more than others.”
Whoever is our next president will be in many ways in control of your life and mine, making decisions that can strengthen us or destroy us as Americans, strengthen or destroy the next generation, including your children. Should you, in all wisdom, vote for a habitual liar who can never be trusted? – A person promising what they never plan to deliver? What if he or she were president and whenever they spoke to the American people they put their own slant on whatever they said and wouldn’t even blink if what theywere telling us wasn’t even a smidgen true?
So, in keeping with keeping with my promise on Campaign 2016 that I will try to tell the truth about each of the candidates – Republican or Democrat – as far as I can find the truth – this time we are going to settle the question “Are Donald Trump and Marco Rubio telling the truth when they say that Ted Cruz is a liar, totally dishonest – one who covers up his tracks to make himself look good?”
Let it be understood from the outset that I admire the positive things that Ted Cruz has done. At Harvard, Cruz amazed his college and America by winning the national college debate championship individually and then won ithe championship again again with his debate partner. Ted Cruz went beyond that and was in the finals for the world college debate championship. He thinks quickly on his feet and is extremely intelligent. As Attorney General in my state of Texas, he was loved by most and it set him in motion to win his Congressional Senate seat. He makes it very clear that he is a conservative and a Christian. All these things make me heavily lean towards Ted Cruz for president. But just before we vote him into the highest office in the land, and arguably the most important office in the world, let’s look at the nagging question “Is Ted Cruz a liar?”
William Saletan at the website Slate says about Ted Cruz “He’s a lawyer, not a leader.” As a conservative, Cruz has argued brilliantly against amnesty, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood, in fact, he has argued in front of the United States Supreme Court on several occasions on subjects dear to the hearts of conservatives.
Ted Cruz said during the Republican debate in Las Vegas, “The battle over amnesty was a time for choosing”. He said that he and Senator Jeff sessions of Alabama stood strongly to secure the border and keep illegal aliens out. Cruz then attacked Marco Rubio who joined Chuck Schumer and other Democrats to push “a total amnesty plan”. Cruz said “I have never supported the legalization of aliens. In fact, I led the fight against Rubio’s legislation and amnesty intentions.” Is THAT true?
What Saleten has done is to study almost every word Ted Cruz spoke during the immigration showdown in the Senate. It’s a timeline that goes between Cruz being sworn in as a freshman Senator in January 2013 and the end of June 2013 when the Senate bill he favored, passed.
You have undoubtedly heard the term “The Gang of Eight”. That was the name given to four Democrats and four Republicans, including Republican Marco Rubio who pushed hard to pass an immigration reform proposal that included a definite path to citizenship. While that was happening, Ted Cruz said that he had “deep concerns” about it and said a path to citizenship would alienate many Republicans. Yet when he was directly asked by news reporters “Would you vote against anything that has a path to citizenship included?” Cruz wouldn’t answer.
Even with that being true, Ted Cruz has been consistent throughout his first term as a senator in saying that he favored tighter borders, stronger enforcement at the borders, and an easier process for legal entry into the United States through H-1B visas (more about that later). Cruz was holding these views during a time when polls showed 60% of Americans endorsed a pathway to citizenship for the illegal aliens whenever a question about that had been asked in a certain way. So, he wasn’t saying any of this to win friends and influence people. He hung tough.
But now let’s flip this coin over. We all know that Ted Cruz’s campaign staff, during the pre-vote week in Iowa that preceded that state’s caucus, sent out robocalls to Iowa’s voters spreading the totally false and destructive information that Doctor Ben Carson was suspending his candidacy. Then the call urged each voter to vote for Cruz instead of wasting their vote on the now non-candidate Carson. When confronted afterward, Senator Cruz excused himself by saying that he had no part in this and that he knew nothing about it while it was being done. The problem is, presidential candidate Ted Cruz should have laid out clear and inflexible rules right from the beginning with his whole staff that in part stated only total honesty would be accepted by him and any dishonesty would result in an immediate firing. No staff member, no matter how high up the ladder, should have been allowed to move ahead on anything that serious without the direct permission of each candidate. Wouldn’t you want your president to be the one to make final decisions that would seriously affect both you and your family?. Doctor Carson was maligned and has said so ever since. There is the probability that that lie cost Ben Carson a large amont of votes, votes that, in such an evangelical state like Iowa, instead most probably went in large number to Cruz. No one will ever know how many votes Dr. Carson lost through that lie or what it may have cost him.
According to Donald Trump, Cruz kept up his lies about him with robocalls throughout South Carolina and did it again in Nevada. Ted Cruz denies it.
During this past week in Nevada, Ted Cruz’s campaign staff was at it again. This time they ran an ad on that states televison showing a photo–shopped picture , supposedly showing Marco Rubio with a large and admiring smile on his face while Barack Obama is smiling back with an “You’re an idiot” grin on his face. In reacting to that supposed photo, Marco Rubio said to reporters “The picture’s a fake, and that alone should prove to you everything I’ve been saying for the last few days – Ted Cruz keeps making things up. I think it’s a disturbing pattern, guys, every day the Cruz team team is spreading lies. In this case they literally lied with a picture.”
Rubio’s top strategist added “There is a culture of dishonesty from top to bottom in Cruz’s presidential campaign. It’s reflected in what Ted Cruz himself says. It’s reflected by the phony, fake, Facebook pages that his supporters put up. It’s reflected by calls to Iowa voters saying Ben Carson had dropped out.
After four state’s were full victims of the Ted Cruz campaign, Cruz finally fired his publicity manager this week. Now it will be easy to watch Cruz’s campaign tactics from here on out. If all of the phoniness ends, it will mean that either it was the publicity manager doing all the false claims, or that Ted Cruz has stopped his own dirty tactics. Like never knowing how many votes Doctor Carson lost because of Ted’s team did, we’ll never know whether Ted Cruz or his campaign staff was guilty of lying. That Ted Cruz didn’t fire his publicity director while they were still in Iowa instead of allowing him to continue spreading lies about Cruz’s rival candidates through three more campaign states, at very least shows a great weakness in his leadership.
With all of that said, there is one other fact that does stick out like a sore thumb. It’s in regards to how Ted Cruz financed his campaign for the United States Senate four years ago. Heidi Cruz, Ted’s beautiful wife, is his biggest supporter in many ways. Ted says he went to Heidi before he was sure he could afford to run for the Senate and said to her “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, our liquid worth, and put it into the campaign.” That amounted to $960,000. Heidi said “Of course.”
Two months later, shortly before the scheduled runoff election, the couple had to add still more money, bringing the total to 1.2 million dollars, which Cruz says “is all we had saved”. However the one thing that Ted neglected to mention was that Heidi works at Goldman Sachs and that’s where they made a $1 million low interest loan that eventually helped complete his road to his Senate seat. That fact was not disclosed by Ted Cruz on his campaign finance report, which is an absolute legal no no. When the New York Times broke the story on this, Ted Cruz said “Woops!” He called it simply an oversight.
Here is what the critics of Ted Cruz are saying about that loan. Goldman Sachs is a company that employs hundreds of workers who are on H–1B visas. As I’ve already mentioned, one of the things that Ted Cruz continues to advocate is a huge increase in H–1B visas. Donald Trump is reminding everyone that it was Ted Cruz who accused him of having “New York values.” When a Washington Post writer reflected on that, they wrote “If hiding a big loan from a Wall Street firm tied to the housing crisis isn’t the essence of ‘New York values’ I am not sure what is.”
Throughout his campaign, Ted Cruz continues to say that Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington must be stopped. And yet it is to one of those banks – Goldman Sachs – to which he owes so much.
Again, Ted Cruz has been the Attorney General of the state of Texas. No one but a tremendously gifted lawyer could ever have such a role. When it was discovered that Cruz hadn’t disclosed his loan, he told the New York Times it was only “an oversight”. The New York Times said of that excuse “Saying it was an oversight after he won his seat is hardly an excuse. It’s evidence that Cruz was hiding the ball all the time it mattered during the election.”
During the November Fox Business Republican debate, Neil Cavuto asked Cruz if he was in favor of bailing out banks. Cruz’s answer was “The truth is, the rich do great with the government. They get in bed with big government. The big banks grow bigger and bigger and bigger under Dodd–Frank, and community banks are going out of business. And by the way, the consequence of that is small businesses can’t get business loans, and it is that fundamental corruption that is why six of the ten wealthiest counties in America are in and around Washington DC.”
Neil Cavuto then asked Cruz “I just want to be clear, if you don’t mind, that millions of depositors would be on the line with that decision. And I just want to be clear. If it were to happen again, for whatever reason, you would let it go, you would let a Bank of America go?”
Ted Cruz answered “So let me be clear, I would not bail them out, but instead of adjusting monetary policy according to whims and getting it wrong over and over again and causing booms and busts, what the Fed should be doing is, number one, keeping our money tied to a stable level of gold. And number two, serving as a lender of last resort.”
The Washington Post said of that remark “That’s the essence of cronyism – Cruz gets his money when he is in a pinch, but ordinary employees, customers and shareholders will get no help from him.”
The Times report continued by saying “In the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low–interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before partly being paid down later that year. Citibank was another Wall Street firm tied up in the housing disaster.
The Washington Post said about all these things “This all feeds into Trump’s argument that he himself is not beholden to anyone, unlike greedy politicians. He is financing his own campaign.” Jennifer Rubin who writes The Right Turn blog for the Washington Post said “The GOP is lucky to find this out now. Imagine what would happen if the party nominated someone with this to go up against the Clinton attack machine. It’s one more reason not to nominate someone with such a thin public record who has never been thoroughly vetted.”
This is Ray Mossholder. With all that I’ve shared in this article and on the one about Marco Rubio that is on Reach More Now YouTube and reachmorenow.com, I in no way mean for any of this to be a personal attack on anyone. I like each candidate still running. But if you are going to vote in the primary, or the 2016 election, please learn all you can about the one you plan to vote for and about the other candidates as well. The next post in this series of Campaign 2016 will turn the spotlight on Donald Trump with the question “What Hasn’t Donald Trump Told Us?”
Donald Trump? Super Tuesday is March 1. Close to half of the delegates who represent definite votes in both the Republican and Democratic party will pledge to the candidates who win each state. Donald Trump is way ahead in the polls in almost all of the states involved – 11 in all. So just before you make your final decision to vote for him or someone else, Ray has written a thought-provoking article that we hope you will take time to view. Join Ray now.
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas. This is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: Trump Trumps The Nevada Caucus
If I had been one of the six Republican candidates tonight and saw the chaos taking place that Nevadans call a caucus, I would have been disgusted and angry. The disorganization, plus the huge crowds, meant that there never will be a really reliable count for all the voting that went on. As one person described it to a reporter “Insanity ruled the night!” Here are just a few of the comments tweeted as the night went on:
A tweet: “Caucus volunteers are wearing Trump cap and Trump shirt. (They are not allowed to show preference). Some of the volunteers are actively bullying folks and not checking IDs.
A Rubio staff member tweeted: “They didn’t ID one of our staff. We alerted the site manager.”
Another tweet: “40 to 50 loose ballots on table. The vote counter looked at them and put them under envelopes.
Yet another tweet: “Elderly couple calls the Rubio line. Says ‘We’ve been registered R’s our whole life. They said we weren’t in the system.”
Another tweet: “IDs are not being checked and ballots are being handed out willy-nilly. Some guy voted for Trump twice.”
Still another: “They just announced that they’ve run out of ballots because they ‘weren’t expecting a crowd this size.”
Running out of balance was a constant in many polling places as the night went on.
Here’s another tweet: “Reno is running out of English ballots – incredible that they have Spanish ballots and amazed about the turnout.
Another: “People registered for Precinct 1303 in Sierra Vista showed up to a caucus. There was literally no site set up.”
A tweet from a high school precinct: “It’s about to get ugly here. How so? Yelling, swearing, disorganized. People are (censored!)
The Nevada Republican headquarters sent out a note on twitter. It read “Obviously we take reports of double voting very seriously and we will be reviewing ballots. There is a master sign in sheet that we will be checking closely as well. In terms of running out of a ballots, we were prepared for that and more were on-site in a matter of minutes. Other thing to know is because you have multiple precincts in one spot, not the entire place was in chaos, just a few that were rushed which contained problems.” You think!?
So when the insanity was done and the votes were counted, how did the results line up?
Donald Trump hit the jackpot! As Politico wrote it “Donald Trump trounced his rivals, notching his third consecutive victory and giving the Manhattan mogul even more momentum heading into Super Tuesday next week, when voters in more than a dozen states will cast their ballots.”
The people of Nevada were more angry at our government than any state that has voted thus far. 57% of Nevada caucus goers said they were “angry” with the federal government. A totally different 36% said they were dissatisfied. That makes it total of 91% of the people! More than 60% said they want someone that is outside the political establishment who has no political experience to fix it.
Donald Trump ended up with 42.6% of the vote. Marco Rubio was second with 24.9% (that’s almost 1 out of 4). Ted Cruz was third with 21.4% (that’s a little more than 1 out of 5). Doctor Ben Carson was fourth with 6.3% (that’s a little more than 1 out of 10). And John Kasich who already knew that his message wouldn’t resonate well in Nevada and didn’t actively campaign in that state, ended up with 3.6%, which may have been more than he expected.
Donald Trump has said numerous times that he does not like caucuses. He might change his mind after tonight!
If the good old boys of the GOP continue any further to work against Trump, they will show their hand – That they want to keep control of who wins so much that they are willing to do it with their power whether or not America’s voters strongly prefer to select the winner themselves. The leaders of the Grand Old Party are looking not very grand but very old tonight. My prediction is that the Republican Party is about to go through a huge change for the better in 2017.
The next debate for all of the Republican candidates still running is Thursday night in Houston, Texas, and can be seen nationwide on CNN. I’ll see you then.
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: the Republican Nevada Caucus Has Begun
It’s all in the cards tonight for the Republican candidates at the Nevada caucus which just began ten minutes ago – and, once again, Donald Trump is holding the winning hand. Maybe that’s why his parents gave him his name of Trump. He seems to be trumping all the other candidates everywhere he goes. Iowa is the one exception where Cruz beat him. But he was a heavy second and sprang from that first caucus to this one, with winning hands all the way. Tonight in Nevada he is ahead in the polls by 25% over his second rival which is expected to be either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio who are neck and neck.
The Donald already got some great news today and his campaign staff probably all got raises. The news is that Donald Trump now has a lead over both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the national polls. If it were possible to change bets in the middle of a horse race, people would be rushing to the windows to put all their money on Donald Trump for president. At this point in time, looking nationally, something terrible would have to happen to him to cause him to lose now.
The Grand Old Party will get a real facelift if Donald Trump is elected. So will Washington DC and the government. That’s why the political bigwigs desperately want to see him stopped. As a political outsider, Donald is like that buck Gary Larson drew a cartoon about that had a huge target on his chest. Another deer looks at him and says “Bummer of a birthmark!”
The good old boys of the GOP – the Karl Rove elites – are having nightmares day and night over what this will mean for them. Everyone from President Obama to Harry Reid are no shaking in their boots. I’m told that in just thinking about it, Barack has lost his last twenty freethrows! The drums to drum Trump out of the race began just as soon as the laughter died out when Donald Trump said he was going to run. They had no idea at the time that he was talking about running the tables state after state.
I probably should be saving those comments for after Super Tuesday, March 1st, when so many states will be voting and more than a third of the delegates will be decided, but I marvel at the fact that it doesn’t matter what the frontrunner says or does, it doesn’t matter what he does with his hair, it doesn’t even matter how many times he’s been married, it is “Trump! Trump! Trump!” all over the United States, and watching his poll numbers climb higher and higher, the cry for Trump to be president is highly contagious.
Some who can’t get past the bird nest that is on top of Donald Trump’s head will tell you the Trump is all talk and no substance. But that’s not at all true. Like what he says or not, Donald is laying out what he will do if he has the privilege of getting into the Oval Office that will actually bring the kind of changes America thought our first black president would bring us. And the reason that the good old boys or Wall Street have no power over the Donald is because he is paying all of the costs to run for president out of his own pocket. He doesn’t have lobbyists, George Soros-types, or even the Republican Party to be beholding to. He is a very rich outsider whose plans, when examined, tend to give him the votes he needs. Those who still hate any idea of the Donald Trump presidency are now saying “The best thing about Trump vs. Clinton is one of them has to lose!”
As for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, in many ways both of them believe that this is do or die. Both want to at least finish second. They need that position going towards the brick wall, Super Tuesday. Ted finished first in Iowa, but so did Hillary Clinton and Rick Santorum in 2012. And how much good did that do for either of them? Cruz knows he can’t look for a huge evangelical vote in Nevada. Besides, Trump seems to be getting the evangelical vote in a much larger capacity than Ted Cruz.
Marco Rubio told his supporters “I think Nevada is the most unpredictable of all the races we’ve had so far.….We’ll see.”
This is been a tough week for Ted Cruz. Denying that he has been dishonest, he fired his senior campaign aide this week, saying that it was this man who was responsible for the lies that were spread through television ads, mailers, and Robocalls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and this week, Nevada. Loved as a conservative, for being a fiery orator, and for his outspoken Christian stance, with another third-place finish following his third-place finish in South Carolina, Ted Cruz could be finished.
Marco now has a whole lot more money in his wallet. When the darling of the good old boys, Jeb Bush, resigned after the results were in in South Carolina, they chose Marco Rubio as their new poster boy. Now the millions of dollars will go to his campaign to do everything possible to still trump Trump. Rubio is handsome, a dynamic speaker who spells out what he would do as president both nationally and internationally if elected.
Along with the huge boost of PAC money, Rubio has a couple of other things going for him. He lived in Nevada when he was a boy, and being a Cuban descent will help him too because of the large concentration of Latinos who live throughout Nevada.
Marco Rubio has also proven that he is made of Teflon. Two gaffes that could have sunk a lesser man, have now been overlooked. First, there was his Republican reply to one of President Obama’s State of the Union addresses that made him appear as if he were speaking from a hideously dry desert. As he spoke to the American people, he guzzled bottled water throughout his message. America laughed, Democrats mocked; and he did look silly. Then there was the second to last debate where he kept repeating himself about President Obama knowing what he is doing in office with all the decisions Obama has made. The crowd and most of the other candidates disagreed vehemently. The newspaper writers gave him a really hard time on that. But he came back the last debate verbally sounding like a genius.
One thing I’ve always thought doesn’t make a lot of sense – the symbol of an elephant representing either party. Elephants never forget. Americans always do.
As for the other two contenders – Ohio Governor John Kasich and former neurosurgeon Doctor Ben Carson – Kasich did not campaign in Nevada because he considered it a wash. He’s already gone to Virginia and then Georgia where his political beliefs he believes will be far more accepted by the voters. By the way, the Republican elite have already tried to pay a lot of money to John Kasich if he will just drop out now. But he won’t. He still believes in his platform and will keep telling America’s voters exactly what he would do as president. The reason the Karl Rove-ites would pay him to drop out is because it would make far more room for their new poster boy.
Doctor Ben Carson had a really difficult interview with Bill O’Reilly last night. It was actually very harsh. Bill told the doctor that he didn’t have a prayer of winning the presidency. Bill asked him why he felt the need to stay in the race at all when he must know that he is obviously not going to win. Ben answered, “Haven’t you ever heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?”
The truth is, after finishing dead last in South Carolina where there is a huge black vote, the doctor knows he is nearly through unless his Lord performs a miracle. Of course, he and I both know that God is great at doing miracles. Doctor Carson held a town hall meeting in Reno on Sunday that he followed up with two more the next two days in Virginia City and Las Vegas.
There are a lot of differences between the Republican caucus in Nevada and the Democratic caucus that took place there last Saturday. The Democrat caucus votes are counted by raised hands. The Republican caucus voting is done by a secret ballot. After tonight, the Nevada Republican Party will select 30 delegates to go to County conventions and while they are there they will contend for tickets to the Republican National Convention. The 30 final Nevada delegates who will go to Cleveland for that convention will be selected through a preference poll.
Speaking of delegates, at this point in the campaign – Donald Trump 67, Ted Cruz 11, Marco Rubio 10, John Kasich 5, and Doctor Ben Carson 3. That will change after tonight.
I will be back to give you a wrap up on the Republican Nevada Caucus as soon as the results are in. In 2012, even though there were only 33,000 votes, it took the vote counters two full days to come up with the results. They say that problem is fixed now and that the candidates should be able to know late tonight so that they can speak to their supporters before leaving the state.
The Battle of Armageddon has disintegrated into hysteria and suicide. Carpathia (the Antichrist) is fleeing in hysteria too. They are headed for Bozrah, and so are Rayford, Mac, and Abdullah. They want to see what Christ is going to do with the Antichrist and with Leon Fortunato. Ray picks the story up at this point. Join him now
Secret talks with North Korea?… Russia plans to fly surveillance planes over the United States?… An Uber driver goes on a murdering spree… Pope Francis hints that condoms may have their place… Barack and Michelle Obama entertain a welcome visitor. Ray has it all and more on this edition of Worldwide News With Ray. Join him now.
Left Behind The Kids: MARATHON Chs 5 thru 8 Lionel is working with Zeke to gather GC uniforms and other items from dead members of the GC Army. One of the GC fired a bullet that went straight through Lionel and didn’t even hurt him.
Vicki and Judd are in Jerusalem where Vicki has been terribly wounded. Now both of them have been caught by the GC and arrested.
Every believer on the planet is waiting eagerly for the second coming of Christ that could be at any minute.
Join Ray now for the continuation of the final book in the Left Behind The Kids series.
This is Ray Mossholder with Campaign 2016. From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: The results of the South Carolina Republican primary and the Nevada caucus.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton win; Jeb Bush drops out; and Marco Rubio squeaks by Ted Cruz. Here are the final results in the two states that voted yesterday.
Donald Trump received almost a third of the votes cast yesterday in South Carolina with 32%; Marco Rubio ended up ahead of Ted Cruz by .2 % – Rubio received 22.5% of the vote to Ted’s 22.3%; Jeb Bush received 7.8% (more about him in a minute); and Doctor Ben Carson received 7.2% of the vote. The spread between the six candidates ranged from Donald Trump’s 238,067 votes to Doctor Carson’s 52,958.
Meanwhile, in Nevada’s caucus, Hillary Clinton won 19 delegates with 52.7% and Sanders got 15 delegates with 47.2%. This will give her momentum in South Carolina and if she wins there, even more momentum when she heads for Super Tuesday, March 1, when a whole lot of states will be voting. Donald Trump may have that same advantage.
Hillary did cover her bets in Nevada. Her press secretary told Brian Fallon on MSNBC before the voting began “There’s reason to believe that Senator Sanders should fare well in a state like Nevada. Obviously there’s an important Hispanic element to the Democratic caucus–goer universe in Nevada, but it’s still a state that is 80% white voters. You have a caucus style format, and he’ll have the momentum coming out of New Hampshire presumably, so there’s a lot of reasons he should do well.” But Bernie didn’t, not nearly as well as Hillary in the Silver State. However, Sanders did far better than polls predicted even a month ago when Hillary Clinton was 13% ahead of him.
In spite of her win, her press secretary’s statement about Nevada having 80% white voters makes it hard to believe she wasn’t either terribly misinformed or flat out lying. Since Nevada was the very first state that set up a campaign headquarters for Hillary among all 50, in all that time Hillary’s press secretary definitely should have known the demographics of the state. That leaves the probability that the press secretary was flat out lying. According to census data from 2014, about half of Nevada’s population is not white – 28% Latino, 9% African-American and 8% Asian American. And in the midst of all that, Hillary was able to do the victory lap.
At the Clinton headquarters, Hillary told her adoring crowd “Americans are right to be angry, but we are also hungry for real solutions. In the campaign, you’ve heard a lot about Washington and Wall Street. We all want to get secret unaccountable money out of politics. That starts with supporting a new justice to the Supreme Court who will protect the right of every citizen to vote, not for every corporation to buy elections. … The truth is, we artist single issue country. We need more than a plan for the big banks, the middle class needs a raise and we need more jobs.”
In South Carolina there were three victory speeches! One from the real winner, Donald Trump; but a second and a third from Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who sounded every bit like they had taken first in South Carolina. And then there was fourth where Jeb Bush crashed and burned.
Jim Bush was the good old boys – the Karl Rove-ites – the rich Republican elite choice for President. When the starting gate for the 2016 election opened, Bush was expected to burst out first and from that time on all the other horses would only see his tail. No one at the beginning would’ve thought that the Bush Dynasty – “Like father, like son” and then another “Like father, like son” but that would never be in the cards for a man named Jeb. It’s hard to tell what would be bothering Jeb Bush most about having to drop out. Would it be the embarrassment of having his ninety-year-old mother stomping for him? Or his brother George W. And his wife Laura coming out of their political closet where they had stayed nearly almost all of Obama’s presidency, to shout the praises of the former governor of Florida? Or was it the millions and millions of dollars squandered by the elite and other Oober-rich lobbyists and fatcats to put him first in this race for the White House – money that has now evaporated along with Jeb’s candidacy? Or is it that the man he attacked with with ridicule and accusation every debate – Marco Rubio – was always way ahead of him wherever state votes had been counted so far? Or did it come last night when whoever it was who told Jeb Bush “Your glory days are over. Drop out!” We will never know, but Jeb Bush does
Ironically, Marco Rubio – Jeb Bush’s nemesis – will be the benefactor more than likely of most of the votes Jeb Bush might’ve gotten in coming state primaries and caucuses. You can will bet the good old boys are putting all of their campaign money on Marco now.
Jeb Bush said to his disappointed fans in South Carolina last night “The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken and I respect your decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign. When I began this journey in Miami I committed that I would campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching and staying true to what I believe. I fully believe the American people must entrust this office to someone who believes whoever holds it is a servant, not the master. In this campaign, I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds. I’m proud of the campaign we have run.”
It is not beyond credulity that America will still get another chance to put Jeb Bush in the White House a few years from now. Dynasties die hard. Just look at the Clinton’s.
Voting is Going Strong Today in South Carolina and Nevada A primary and a caucus are being held today to separate the sheep from the goats. The Republican ticket for South Carolina will be decided in their primary while several of the candidates are holding their breath and are keeping their fingers crossed. If Super Tuesday, March 1, wasn’t straight ahead for all of them, at least two of the candidates might feel they should drop out now. Nevada is holding a caucus in a race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders that all polls show is too close to call. Ray has all the facts to prepare you for whatever the results are. Join Ray now.
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: South Carolina and Nevada vote today.
South Carolina and Nevada are the third and fourth states to cast their votes in primaries or caucuses. Nevada voters and voters in South Carolina are being counted today. A far heavier than usual voter turnout in South Carolina in great weather is exciting the whole state. Tonight we will know who the voters in South Carolina favor among the six remaining Republican candidates. Nevada will have caucused and by tonight the gambling state will have chosen Hillary or Bernie. Some of the candidates have much more to lose than others.
According to Reuters, Donald Trump has a twenty point lead over all other candidates in today’s South Carolina vote. Reuters is one of the two most respected polling companies nationally (the other being Yougov). If the Reuters poll has the rest of the pack right, tonight’s primary will end up with Ted Cruz receiving 17%, Marco Rubio receiving 11%, Doctor Ben Carson 10%, Jeb Bush 8% and John Kasich 2%. As good as they are, even Reuters can miss it with their polling, so the results of the night may be very different than what their poll shows. South Carolina is known as the Palmetto State. It has what is called an open primary. That means any registered voter can cast developed in either of the two parties primaries. At stake are 50 delegates. The winner tonight takes at least 29 of them. The other twenty-one delegates are awarded to the top candidate in each of the seven congressional districts. All of the delegates will go to the July 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio. South Carolina’s population is 4.8 million in forty-six counties.
If Trump wins the South Carolina vote he will be carrying strong momentum going into Super Tuesday, March 1, when a third of the delegates to the Republican convention will be chosen. If Jeb Bush and Doctor Ben Carson don’t do far better than expected with the voters of South Carolina, they will have very little reason to continue the race. Marco Rubio simply needs to place second or third and well above Jeb Bush to stay strongly in the running. John Kasich has said the South Carolina vote won’t matter to him. He plans to go on campaigning and expects Super Tuesday to be super for him. If they had the money to continue after a slap in the face from the voters of South Carolina, Bush and Carson may go as far as Super Tuesday too. This is former Republican candidate Lindsey Graham’s state, but he has already abandoned his candidacy.
Nevada began having caucuses in 2008. Before that they had primaries. Nevada’s caucuses begin with neighborhood meetings of Democrats who come together to elect delegates to the county, state and national conventions. Same day registration has been offered to new voters, or Republicans and independents who want to vote Democrat. Any eligible voter will be eighteen years old by Election day on November 8 can caucus. If you have ever driven in Nevada so that you went through the whole state, you know that there are miles and miles of vacant land and very few cities. Still there are about 250 caucus locations that will be active today. The state will award a total of forty-three delegates and three alternates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention being held in Philadelphia in July. Nevada is known for its extremely low voter turnout. That gives extra importance to those who show up and caucus. No matter how the vote turns out today in that state, Hillary Clinton already has three Superdelegates pledged to her. Just like Iowa, of flipping of a coin may actually decide the winner tonight because Clinton and Sanders are locked in an absolute dead heat.
The Pope has all but apologized to Donald Trump, saying that he was very much misunderstood about building walls by the interpreter in Mexico who must not have been able to handle the Pope’s Italian language all that well. The truth is, the Vatican has very high walls to protect it. Trump had said yesterday the Pope had undoubtedly been misquoted. He bore no ill will towards the Pope.
But the Donald had a very different reaction to Apple Inc. because that company refused to cooperate with the judges order to assist law enforcement in unlocking the iPhone of the shooter who killed fourteen people in San Bernardino, California, at a Christmas party in December. Trump called for a boycott of Apple. He said “Boycott them until they give up the information. The phone is owned by the government.” This situation may be solved by the clever judge who told Apple’s owner Tim Cook that all he had to do was make a break–in into the one phone the killer used and then whatever creation Cook came up with to do that could be destroyed.
Trump doesn’t seem to care who he verbally attacks. Proof enough of that is that he had negative words about Boeing, a company deeply liked by most South Carolinians. That’s either stupid or gutsy. But Trump was pointing out that Boeing opened its largest industrial investment in China last year. Since 2011 Boeing has been building its 787 Dreamliner in North Charleston and it employs about eight thousand people. Trump said “South Carolina has a beautiful plant built by Boeing. But if China cuts the value of its currency a couple of years from now, be careful that your nothing to lose it here.” He told his crowd that if he becomes President, that kind of thing won’t happen on his watch.
Once more Trump, echoed by Marco Rubio, called Ted Cruz a liar. In fact, the Donald said “Ted Cruz is the biggest liar I have ever seen”. I am working on an article right now that asks the question “Is Ted Cruz a liar?” It will be on Reach More Now YouTube and reachmorenow.com in a day or two.
Voting is Going Strong Today in South Carolina and Nevada
Left Behind The Kids: Chs 1 thru 4 MARATHON TRIUMPHANT RETURN
Ray will now begin reading the fortieth and final book of Left Behind The Kids by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins.
Judd and Vicki are married now. They were married in Petra. But their other deep passion besides each other is winning to Christ everyone who hasn’t received the mark of the beast because they know Christ is returning almost immediately. That’s why they ask Westin Jakes to fly them to Jerusalem and he does. Now Carpathia’s worldwide Army of unbelievers is just about to begin the Battle of Armageddon and is ready to destroy Jerusalem.
Lionel is outside Petra helping Zeke collect GC uniforms and other things that Zeke could use for making disguises. Another part of the Antichrist’s worldwide Army is moving towards Petra.
Near Chicago, Enoch, the leader of a hidden group of believers that Chloe Williams had discovered is watching the skies for Christ’s return too.
Ray picks the story up here.
Left Behind The Kids: Chs 1 thru 4 MARATHON TRIUMPHANT RETURN
Ray did chapter 11 live three days ago, but thanks to viewers letting him know through comments, he is going to repeat this chapter now WITH SOUND!
Every believer on the entire planet Earth is waiting for the second coming of Christ. As Carpathia’s (the Antichrist) leads his troops into the Battle of Armageddon, the world is about to end.
How Would Marco Rubio Handle America’s Money? by Ray
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this Campaign 2016 with a question: How Would Marco Rubio Handle America’s Money?
One of those things that the national media seldom seems to mention is the handling of money problems that Marco Rubio has had to work out all his forty-four years. First, there’s the matter of the Republican Party credit card. Marco misspent a great deal of money from a hundred thousand dollars limit Republican Party credit card that he carried in his wallet. When asked about that during a Republican debate, his response sounded like Hillary Clinton would you about the Republicans. He said such claims were “discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents”. But are they? In this edition of Campaign 2016 we’re going to look to find out. I like Marco, but I want our next president to be honest, or as honest as possible, given the truth that everybody’s human – even presidents. (Even the statement attributed to George Washington – “I cannot tell a lie” is a lie!) And since the current president has spent more money than all other of our -three presidents COMBINED, and since the national debt is this minute more than 19 trillion dollars and keeps growing every second, knowing how to handle our nation’s finances is one of the absolute necessities for whoever becomes president next.
One thing the media in all forms does is take the kind of thing that I’m going to share with you now and hold it away from everyone until a party selects it’s official candidate – then all the scandals and damaging National Enquirer kind of news–mongering breaks out and the stories don’t even have to be true. It’s why you hear me say every once in awhile that most newspapers in America are not worth putting on the bottom of your birdcage. But, before all this is used to sink this candidates ship of state, let’s get the truth out now.
When Donald Trump said during one of the Republican debates that Marco Rubio is “a disaster with his credit cards”, the Donald wasn’t just whistling Dixie. Marco mixed his personal and business expenses during 2005 to 2008 on an American Express card. Under IRS rules, donations to political parties, which are tax exempt, can only go towards influencing elections.
Former Republican Party spokesman Katie Gordon explains “the card Marco Rubio was using is meant to be used for official business expenses only.” But Marco instead used the card for lavish dinners, repairs to his family minivan, and purchases from a wine store near his house. On the card was even a $6,773 charge for a family reunion in a Georgia resort.
When the Tampa Bay Times broke this story in 2010, Rubio countered with the statement “I was as diligent as possible to ensure the party did not pay for items that were unrelated to party business.” He said that he reviewed the credit card bill every month and paid for the expenses that he deemed personal. Marco told those who attended the family reunion that he was in trouble for the money he had used on the American Express card, and several members of the family sent checks that helped him cover most of the reunion expenses. The Republican Party still ended up paying $714 for the reunion.
During that time Rubio and his wife controlled two political committees that together collected $600,000. Again the Tampa paper pointed out that Rubio had failed to disclose $34,000 in expenses, that he paid family members for expenses that were incorrectly labeled, and that he spent very little on contributions to other candidates. Later it was discovered that as speaker in Florida, Rubio double billed the Republican Party and state taxpayers for eight airplane flights, which totaled about $2400. When the discrepancy was discovered and Rubio was contacted, he said it was a “mistake” and reimbursed the party.
In 2012, the Florida Commission on Ethics made a thorough investigation of Rubio’s use of his Florida GOP American Express card and finally cleared him of any wrongdoing. But one of the investigators noted that he still found Marco’s “negligence” in habitually being far less than careful with money that did not belong to him “disturbing”.
And we’re not done yet. Rubio actually owned two homes, and he had problems with both of them. In 2005, Mr. and Mrs. Rubio bought a home in West Miami for $550,000. An appraisal on the home was then valued at $735,000 – far above the purchase price. Close to a month later, the Rubio’s qualified for a $135,000 home-equity loan from U.S. Century Bank, a bank whose owner just happened to be a major Rubio supporter. In 2008, a Miami Herald reporter asked Marco why his home equity loan didn’t appear on his financial disclosure forms. Rubio quickly updated the forms.
Marco was a close friend of David Rivera, who was a Florida legislator. Together they bought a $135,000 home in Tallahassee, Florida, that they intended to live in during the Florida legislative session. The home came close to going into foreclosure during Rubio’s 2010 Senate race because they had failed to pay the mortgage for five months. Rivera settled the issue with a lump payment of $9,525. Both Rivera and Rubio claimed the delay had been made because of a disagreement they had had with the mortgage company.
Rivera and Rubio have parted company since Rivera was fined $58,000 in a Florida ethics investigation that Rubio was not involved in. They ended up selling the house they had purchased together. It sold for $117,000, which meant they lost $18,000 on the sale.
And we are not done yet. In September 2014, Marco sold six of his retirement funds for $68,000. The New York Times reported those sales most likely cost Rubio about $24,000 in taxes and penalties. But Rubio’s financial situation has improved in recent years, a lot of that having to do with the sale of the two books he’s written. He paid off his student loans shortly after becoming a senator with the money he earned from his book An American Son.
According to his financial disclosures, shortly after he was elected to the Florida Legislature in 2000, he had $150,000 in student loan debt and he owed $30,000 in other debts, which gave him a net worth of zero. But after writing his first book he was given an $800,000 advance from the publisher which he used in part to pay off those debts.
In his own defense, Marco Rubio says he knows he’s made financial mistakes, ranging from sloppy bookkeeping to accidentally using the wrong credit card. But anytime any part of what I’ve shared with you right now is brought up, Rubio calls it a political smear.
I hope you know by now that I don’t take part in smearing anyone. But I believe every voter in America who hopes to select our next president, should be extremely clear about who they are voting for.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio continue to call Ted Cruz a liar. Is he? I’ll answer that in the next Campaign 2016.
How Would Marco Rubio Handle America’s Money? by Ray
Campaign 2016: Who is going to win in South Carolina and Nevada?
Today is the last day for all the Republican candidates to campaign in South Carolina before that state’s Republican primary tomorrow. And it’s the last day for Hillary and Bernie to campaign before the Nevada Democrat caucus tomorrow. Saturday will be a sadder-day for some of those running. And who is going to win and get bragging rights? Ray’s got a lot to say about the race. Join him now.
Campaign 2016: Who is going to win in South Carolina and Nevada?
Left Behind The Kids: MARATHON Chs. 13 – 15, The Road To War Carpathia (the Antichrist) is rallying the unbelievers of the world to militarily destroy Jerusalem and Petra. He is releasing demons in his rebellion against God. He plans to use nuclear weapons and destroy all believers in Christ. Vicki and Judd watch on television from Petra in complete disgust. Ray picks the story up at this point.
Ray: raymossholder@gmail.com
http://holyhugsray.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ray.mossholder
Larry: larrymjackii@gmail.com
https://twitter.com/LarryJack2
http://larryjack.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/LarryJackII
Left Behind The Kids: MARATHON Chs. 13 – 15, The Road To War
Worldwide News With Ray February 18, 2016 War between North and South Korea may be about to happen – John Kerry says China is violating the South China Sea and something must be done – An Apple a day keeps the FBI away – a famous Christian is in serious trouble with the law – and Russia urges its people “Don’t be like Obama”. All these stories and more as Ray brings worldwide news to this hour. Join him now.
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is the news…… News Question of the day: Are we headed for another Korean War? Or is President Obama drawing another line in the sand, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? What happened yesterday was almost like a game of chicken that teases other kids to react because of intimidation. Admittedly, the game was begun by North Korea and it doesn’t usually amount to much when kids play it. But that’s very much not the case when nations play it. Now, according to South Korea’s spy agency, North Korea is currently planning a “terrorist attack” on them.
Yesterday a fleet of stealth bombers from our nation flew over South Korea in a gesture of support for the country that recently had a flyby from North Korea; a flyby dropping huge piles of cigarette butts from the sky on to Seoul and other cities. But far more concerned then when they did that is North Korea’s nuclear missile launching that threatens once again to create the background for what North Korea’s twisted leader Kim Jong Un has already declared as “war”. Given what America is doing to stop Isis right now, will Obama put boots on the ground to honor our treaty with South Korea or bring the troops and their boots home from there where they have been stationed for many years?
Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is going to have “a very serious conversation” with China in the near future because of their increasing military presence in the South China Sea. Kerry says “When President Xi was here in Washington, he stood in the Rose Garden with President Obama and said China would not militarize in the South China Sea. But there is every evidence every day that there has been an increase of militarization of one kind or another.”
This military buildup has taken place in just the last two weeks at Woody Island which is also claimed by both Vietnam and Taiwan. President Obama held a summit last week with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, in which he condemned China’s military posturing. The South China Sea is international waters that serve as a major trade route.
Iraq says it can’t find “highly dangerous” radioactive material that was reportedly stolen last November. They say the material that had been stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer disappeared from Weatherford, the United States oilfield service. The radioactive material and the case are the type used for making dirty bombs.
Terrorists have killed eighteen people and wounded forty-five in Ankara, Turkey. The explosion occurred during evening rush hour. Buses carrying military personnel were attacked while waiting for traffic lights to change at an intersection. Ankara governor Mehmet Kiliker said he believes the explosion was caused by a “bomb–laden vehicle” and was “a contemptible and dastardly attack”. No one is sure who did the bombing. Kurdish rebels, Isis, and a leftist extremist group have carried out attacks in Turkey recently.
Pro-life advocates in Mississippi, West Virginia, Idaho, Missouri, Minnesota, and Nebraska, have filed bills to ban an abortion procedure known as a D&E that is commonly used in the second trimester for dismembering a baby in her mother’s womb. Other states are also getting ready to file the same thing. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights exists to represent abortion providers in legal matters. They claim that forcing the ending of the dilation and evacuation method of abortion is unconstitutional because it interferes with private medical decisions. Courts have already blocked similar laws in both Kansas and Oklahoma.
Pope Francis has completed his visit to Mexico. His final message was for the world was to receive all the fleeing immigrants and to have compassion on them. As the jet plane the Pope was riding in last Friday was making its approach to its landing in Mexico City it was struck by a laser beam. No harm came to the plane or those inside it, but it was considered an illegal attack.
The Chief Executive of Apple, Tim Cook, says he plans to continue protecting the world of Apple users from the invasion of their privacy no matter what the FBI demands. He has denied a federal judge’s order to create software that would allow access to encrypted data on iPhones. The stated aim of our government is to specifically crack the data on the iPhone that belonged to the terrorist couple who murdered fourteen people in San Bernardino, California, last year. Cook argues that he has forever promised all Apple users that they would never have their privacy invaded and he doesn’t plan to have lied to them.
Tim is the man who replaced Steve Jobs when Steve was too sick to oversee Apple any further. Tim is indeed a different kind of guy. He was the first Fortune 500 company executive who announced that he was gay. He pledges that one day he will give all of his money to charity. And he is outspoken about the importance of social justice, the environment, and diversity.
In January, President Obama sent high-ranking national security advisors to meet with Apple, Facebook, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and they demanded greater cooperation with law enforcement. Our government is not used to being told no, most especially when a court order demands an action to be taken. But so far Tim Cook is holding his ground.
On the Apple website it carries a letter from Tim Cook that says in part “I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”
Remember the story I shared with you yesterday about the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center staff not being able to access its computer network since February 5th? Well, now they are able to access it again. How? This statement from Allen Stefanek, director of the hospital, explains it: “The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and obtain the decryption key was to pay the ransom. It was in the best interest of restoring normal operations that we did this.” The hospital paid 40 bitcoins, which is equal to about $17,000.
Bitcoins were created in 2009 by an unknown person using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. It eliminates the need for banks. There are no transaction fees and no need to give your real name. More and more merchants are accepting them. You can even buy pizza or manicures with bitcoins. But they are still rare enough so that I’ve never seen one.
Cliven Bundy, his two sons – Ryan and Ammon – and two other men – Ron Payne and Peter Santilli, who were part of the Oregon wildlife occupation, have been indicted. The five are facing sixteen felony charges because of their armed standoff with the federal government in 2014 that included over 400 militia defending the Bundy’s. United States Attorney Daniel G. Bogden told them “Persons who use force and violence against federal law enforcement officers who are enforcing court orders, and nearly causing catastrophic loss of life or injury to others, will be brought to justice.” Clyburn was denied bail for being “a danger to the community” and “a flight risk”.
The land the Bundy’s lived on consists of 160 acres in a sparsely populated area near the borders of Utah and Arizona. The Bundy Ranch is near the Virgin River, a few miles from where interstate Highway 15 crosses into Arizona – 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas. According to the authorities, more than a thousand head of cattle wandered as far as 50 miles from the ranch into the Lake Mead National Recreational Area. Reportedly “They got stuck in the mud, wandered onto golf courses, strayed onto the freeway (sometimes causing accidents).” In 2014, Bundy was charged with six counts for his first showdown against federal land managers on the open range where his cattle grazed and fed. At that time, the federal Bureau of land management and the local authority finally walked away. In fact, they halted the roundup of Bundy’s cattle and returned about 300 head, completely avoiding violence. This time things have gone very differently for Bundy.
Prosecutors said “The presence of many gunmen in and near the area of the Bundy Ranch, the armed checkpoints and patrols, the presence of assault weapons in the militia camps, including (by some accounts) a .50 caliber machine gun, further increased the difficulty of conducting a physical investigation of the Bundy Ranch or the impoundment site.” Now that they were arrested in Oregon these prosecutors say “Justice will be served”.
Bundy is 69 and runs a strong probability of being given a life sentence in prison if he is convicted.
A name well-known to Christians in America during the latter part of the twentieth century is Bill Gothard. Thousands in many parts of the country and overseas flocked to Bill Gothard Basic Institute of Youth Dynamics. His legalistic teaching was followed as God’s word and often put his believers under tremendous bondage. After attending his seminar, I was shocked by how hundreds of people had swallowed Gothard’s teaching as if it were biblical. Often when I spoke out about it, I was shouted down. Now a lawsuit alleges sixteen members of his staff as well as Bill have attempted to cover up their sexual abuse of minors in numbers so large it makes Bill Cosby look like a choir boy. The lawsuit further alleges that Bill Gothard’s organization has been “liquidating assets” totaling more than one hundred million dollars “in an attempt to flee the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois where this wrongful conduct continually occurred.”
Prosecutors said “Our clients are telling the same story that happened over and over again. There was repeated abuse – re-victimizing the women and men who had been raped. Psychological abuse and sexual harassment of rape victims, manipulating and torturing people over and over again for decades. The board knew about it. Ultimately they did nothing, but after Internet pressure Bill Gothard resigned his organization but then went out to harass victims, ordering them to help him cover up the abuse. Gothard’s own brother who worked for the organization was dismissed after it was discovered that he was having sex with many students who had come for help. The civil action is seeking $50,000 plus per plaintiff. The latest version of the complaint includes more than 200 pages of allegations.
Bill Gothard manipulates the Bible the same way he is attempting to manipulate and control the lawyers who are representing the victims. On December 31, 2015, Gothard sent a letter threatening “greater damage to your clients and to the cause of Christ if you expand and refine your lawsuit.” He further wrote “Jesus affirmed the death penalty for doing this when he stated “He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” He additionally charged that the “emotional damages of your clients were caused by ‘whispering’ and ‘tale–bearing’ against him. Bill Gothard added “Christianity is under attack in the world” and that he wants “nothing to do with your amended lawsuit.”
The charges are “Gothard and his organization sexually, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and/or psychologically abused the plaintiffs – against their wishes and over their objections. This perverse and offensive conduct repeatedly took place over the course of several decades.”
A real brouhaha has ramped up to bite President Obama, reminding him of his early days in the Senate. Nearly everyone has heard him declare that the Republicans are obstructionists because they have announced that they will block anyone he nominates to the Supreme Court this year. But in 2006, a younger Senator Obama filibustered to block the entrance to the Supreme Court of Justice Samuel Alito. Obama said today that he deeply regrets what he did and that he already knew Judge Alito had the votes to secure his nomination. President George W. Bush appointed Justice Alito to the bench.
In his daily briefing with the press corps yesterday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said about this, “Looking back on it, the president believes that he should have just followed his own advice and made a strong public case on the merits about his opposition to the nomination of Justice Alito. But there’s a pretty stark difference here. What Republicans are advocating is wrong and it’s inconsistent with the requirements of the Constitution, primarily because the wording of the Constitution is unambiguous and does not provide an exception for election years.”
The immediate GOP response is that President Obama as Senator did filibuster and that all the wishing in the world doesn’t change that fact. Now the shoe is on the other foot and President Obama is the pot calling the kettle black.
Steven Pratt spent thirty years in prison for killing a neighbor. Two days after he was released, he killed his mother. All this happened in Mays Landing, New Jersey. As Pratt cried before a judge yesterday he told the judge he didn’t want a trial because he was guilty as charged.
The recaptured drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is complaining that bed checks every two hours at Altiplano prison in central Mexico is “turning him into a zombie.” Guzman also says that a guard dog barks a lot between bed checks. One of his attorneys is claiming that sleep deprivation for Guzman is infamous and brutal torture, and that he will not rest until warden Salvador Solis is prosecuted.
70-year-old Maureen Smith and 55-year-old David Kaltschmidt were handed 327 million, 800,000 dollars yesterday. They’ll have to pay taxes, of course, but that was the lump sum that this Florida couple received for having the second of three winning tickets from last month’s 1.6 million dollar Powerball jackpot. There is still a winner who purchased their ticket in Chino Hills, California. So far whoever it is hasn’t come forward to claim their prize.
None of us knows when death might strike us. Caitlin Clavette, age 35, an art teacher at Glover Elementary School in a suburb of Boston, was driving to work when a dislodged manhole cover that weighed more than 200 pounds went flying through the air and crashed through her SUV’s windshield on a major highway. She was killed instantly.
And finally…. Russia doesn’t like President Obama. A new poster seen throughout Russia today shows a picture of Barack Obama smoking. The poster reads in Russian “Smoking kills more people than Obama, although he kills lots and lots of people. Don’t smoke. Don’t be like Obama.”
