AND ANOTHER NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: “Civilian Casualties Hit Record High In Afghanistan“

DON’T DO STUPID SH*T: U.S. Allies Now Fighting CIA-Backed Rebels

Iraqi militias who once fought ISIS with U.S. help are now working with Russian and Iranian forces to crush American-backed rebels in the strategic Syrian city of Aleppo, two defense officials have told The Daily Beast.

At least three Shia militias involved in successful battles against ISIS in Iraq—the Badr Brigade, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and the League of the Righteous—have acknowledged taking casualties in fighting in south and southeast Aleppo province. U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Daily Beast that they believe “at least one” unit of the Badr Brigade is fighting in southern Aleppo alongside other Iraqi militia groups. Those groups are backed by Russian airpower and Iranian troops—and all of whom are bolstering President Bashar al Assad’s Syrian Arab Army.

It’s almost as if nobody over there trusts us anymore.

HILLARY’S NEVADA PROBLEM: Jon Ralston explains to Chris Cillizza.

I don’t consider those polls reliable or recent. The Clinton folks are saying it could be close and distorting Nevada’s demographics (suddenly we are as white as Iowa and New Hampshire!) because they are worried about the Bernie surge. And I think they should be. Team Clinton has an infrastructure advantage, and its staff here is first-rate and knows the state. Some worked here in ’08. They also arrived six months before Team Sanders, whose folks do not know the state nearly as well. But he is outspending her on TV — this may be changing — and same-day registration on Feb. 20 may allow a lot of new, Sanders voters to change the course of the election. Hillary knew a long time ago she would need a firewall in Nevada; that’s why she set up here so early. The firewall isn’t breached yet, but it may be buckling soon.

Clinton is relying on outsized support from minority voters in Nevada and South Carolina to put a stop to the Sanders Surge, but all may not be proceeding as she has foreseen.

RUSSIA AND TURKEY EDGE CLOSER TO WAR IN SYRIA:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has implied that Turkey will take action after the capture of the town of Azez in Syria, a strategic corridor between Aleppo and Turkey for rebel groups, by Syrian regime troops backed by Russian airstrikes.

Speaking to reporters en route to Turkey from the Netherlands, Davutoğlu said that he had told German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the need to stop Russia in Syria in order to prevent further influxes of refugees to Turkey and Europe from the region, the Hürriyet daily reported on Friday. When asked whether Turkey will take action to reopen the corridor to Aleppo, Davutoğlu said, “Wait for the next few days and you will have the answer,” daily Hürriyet reported on Friday.

It’s difficult to know in these moments whether to draw a red line, hand out a reset button, or tweet a clever new hash tag.

BECAUSE SOMEBODY WAS WILLING TO BUY? “The CEO of Myspace tells us why he just sold the company to Time Inc“

NOW THAT’S MY KIND OF FEMINISM: “Former ISIS sex slaves now army of ‘Sun Ladies’ ready to defeat terror group”

Some 2,000 Yazidi women who were captured in the brutal August 2014 attack on their mountain stronghold have escaped and have taken up arms against their former tormentors. Driven by the fresh memories of unspeakable atrocities and the survival of their people, hundreds have signed up to fight the black-clad terrorist army.

“Now we are defending ourselves from the evil; we are defending all the minorities in the region,” Capt. Khatoon Khider told FoxNews.com from the unit’s makeshift base in Duhok, Iraq. “We will do whatever is asked of us.”

Godspeed, ladies.

[Link fixed!]

CHANGE: “Bernie Sanders Intrigues a South Carolina Town That Loves Hillary Clinton“

PAGLIA: “Sexism has nothing to do with it”

Despite emergency efforts by Gloria Steinem, the crafty dowager empress of feminism, to push a faltering Hillary over the finish line, Sanders overwhelmingly won women’s votes in every category except senior citizens. Last week, when she told TV host Bill Maher that young women supporting the Sanders campaign are just in it to meet boys, Steinem managed not only to insult the intelligence and idealism of the young but to vaporize every lesbian Sanders fan into a spectral non-person.

Steinem’s polished humanitarian mask had slipped, revealing the mummified fascist within. I’m sure that my delight was shared by other dissident feminists everywhere. Never before has the general public, here or abroad, more clearly seen the arrogance and amoral manipulativeness of the power elite who hijacked and stunted second-wave feminism.

Read the whole thing.

PIVOT TO ASIA UPDATE: “North Korea Orders South Out of Kaesong Border Factory, Seizes Assets”

North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland — part of Kim Jong Un’s ruling Workers’ Party — said in a televised statement that Pyongyang “will deport all South Korean workers as of 5 p.m. [3:30 a.m. ET]. We will freeze all South Korean assets including factory facilities, goods and all others and those being deported may only take their personal belongings.”

The fiery statement also called the South’s shutdown of the plant a “dangerous declaration of war” and contained crude insults against South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, calling her a “confrontational wicked woman” who lives upon “the groin of her American boss,” according to The Associated Press.

Say what you will about Kim Jong-un, but at least he makes an entertaining press release.

EVERLASTING LOVE: “American World War II veteran reunites with wartime girlfriend in Australia“

YOU DON’T SAY: “Hillary Clinton has an honesty problem,” according to Chris Cillizza.

That point is driven home hard in the exit poll following Clinton’s 22-point drubbing at the hands of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. More than one in three (34 percent) of all New Hampshire Democratic primary voters said that honesty was the most important trait in their decision on which candidate to support. Of that bloc, Sanders won 92 percent of their votes as compared to just 6 percent for Clinton.

Ninety two to six. That is absolutely unbelievable — even given the size of Sanders’s overall victory in the state.

“Unbelievable?” Really?

CHANGE: Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization announces big cuts to climate change programs in order to focus on “commercializing good ideas and collaborating with industry.”

BRYCE COVERT: “Of course Hillary Clinton is a victim of sexism”

Of course.

Clinton’s staggering loss in New Hampshire has nothing to do with her party’s hard leftward shift under Barack Obama, youthful enthusiasm for an anti-establishment opponent in a season of anti-establishment fever in both parties, voter preference for a local candidate, misgivings about her handling of Top Secret information as Secretary of State, her lack of accomplishments as SecState or as a Senator, or her own poorly managed campaign.

No, the voters of New Hampshire — largely the same voters who saved Clinton’s campaign with a convincing win over Obama in 2008 — suddenly noticed the Clinton is a woman and decided “We can’t have that!”

Of course.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: “The Left Has Two Huge Advantages, and I Have No Idea How We Overcome Them“

GLASS CEILING: “Bernie Sanders Suddenly Looking and Sounding Like a Front-Runner“

LORD, MAKE ME VOTE FOR HILLARY — BUT NOT YET: “Bernie Sanders’ Female Supporters Want To Break The Gender Barrier… Just Not Now”

“I’m a 65-year-old woman. A Democrat. I’ve always voted Democrat,” said Maryclaire Heffernan, a Sanders supporter from Candia, New Hampshire. “It’s a tough one. I voted for Obama twice. So I’ve already not voted for Hillary once … If Hillary is the nominee I would absolutely support her. However, I am concerned about where we are and think if we don’t think big, we have to stop thinking around the edges or holding the edges in place.”

“I do feel bad about it,” she added, a tinge of pain visible on her face. “And I have dear friends who would kill me for saying that out loud.”

At Sanders’ rallies here in New Hampshire, you meet plenty of women just like Heffernan.

There’s just no denying the hotness of Bernie’s appeal.

NANNY STATERS GOTTA NANNY: 2016 “may be the sweet spot” for sugar taxes.

Scandinavian countries have had such taxes, with varying degrees of success, for many years, and in 2012, France and Hungary joined the list, followed by Mexico in 2014.

But some public policy experts see them becoming more widespread, as nations seek to bolster their finances in an uncertain global economy and a new generation of savvy consumers is more concerned about health and less trusting of big corporations.

“This puts political leaders in a stronger position to enact policies such as taxes because the companies aren’t considered unbreakable,” said Kelly Brownell, dean of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy in North Carolina.

Now India, the Philippines and Indonesia have said they are studying similar levies while Britain debated the issue in parliament late last year and Prime Minister David Cameron said in January that he would not rule out a sugar tax.

How about a tax on all new tax proposals, to be paid for by their proponents? Such a tax might work as a disincentive to bad taxation, and give legislators an incentive to spend their limited energies and incomes on only the good taxes.

BYRON YORK: “There were portions of Trump’s Plymouth speech that sounded like Bernie Sanders, if Sanders had Trump’s sense of showmanship.”

BILL CLINTON UNLOADS ON BERNIE SANDERS:

For weeks, former president Bill Clinton has been the doomsday device of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — a mighty weapon capable of doing great good or harm to her campaign — so held in reserve until absolutely needed.

Now, as Hillary Clinton — who barely won the Iowa caucus last week — seeks to seize momentum from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in his own backyard days ahead of the New Hampshire primary, that moment of truth has come. The former president, uncharacteristically quiet in recent weeks even as Republican contender Donald Trump called him “an abuser,” struck out at Sanders Sunday, according to reports from Bloomberg, Politico and the New York Times, while campaigning for his wife in New Hampshire, leveling charges that the senator is hypocritical and that some of his followers are sexist.

The former president appeared to get the most mileage out of his criticism of “Bernie Bros” — the name given to some supposed young male supporters of the Vermont senator. Bill Clinton did not use the term — but he offered quite the critique. As Politico noted, Clinton accused these people, some of whom have been denounced by Sanders, of sexist behavior online.

That last line is rich with irony — but so is the entire story. Bill Clinton never wavered in his support of President Obama, even as Obama moved their party hard to the left, undoing virtually all of Clinton’s policies from the ’90s. Hillary has been forced to embrace those policies, but not even she can move far enough left to thwart the avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders.

The Sanders candidacy is the inevitable result of the Obama presidency, which the Clintons helped to advance every step of the way since Obama’s coronation in Denver eight years ago.

Much like Hillary has always enabled Bill’s sexual appetites, Hillary now risks being denied her own coronation — after spending eight years enabling the machinations of a far-left President.

CNN-WMUR POLL: Sanders up in New Hampshire by eight points – with female voters.

While many older women’s rights advocates see the election of Clinton as the next logical step in a broader movement, some younger activists have expressed resentment at the notion that they should feel obligated to vote for Clinton simply because she’s a woman. Some have argued in recent months that Sanders, with his calls to end income inequality and make college free, is arguably the more feminist candidate.

Strong, independent women looking for free stuff from an old white man.

FASTER, PLEASE: A time-release caffeine bracelet.

METAPHOR ALERT: Chicago Stock Exchange Says It’s Being Sold to Chinese-Led Group

GALLUP: Red States Outnumber Blue for First Time in Gallup Tracking.

Gallup’s analysis of political party affiliation at the state level in 2015 finds that 20 states are solidly Republican or leaning Republican, compared with 14 solidly Democratic or leaning Democratic states. The remaining 16 are competitive. This is the first time in Gallup’s eight years of tracking partisanship by state that there have been more Republican than Democratic states. It also marks a dramatic shift from 2008, when Democratic strength nationally was its greatest in recent decades.

The Competitive column includes formerly-blue Pennsylvania and the upper Midwestern states of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. All five went for Barack Obama in the last two elections, and hold a total of 62 electoral college votes in 2016.

THE HEAT IS ON, at last, at last night’s Democratic debate:

“I think it’s time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent week,” Clinton said after Sanders talked about getting money out of politics.

Sanders has boasted about not receiving money from Wall street, and has pointed out in recent weeks that Clinton has received large sums in exchange for speaking.

“Sen. Sanders has said he wants to run a positive campaign. I’ve tried to keep my disagreements over issues, but time and time again, by innuendo and by insinuation there is this attack that he is putting forth,” Clinton said.

“Which really comes down to anyone who ever took donations or speaking fees from interest groups has to be bought, and I absolutely reject that Senator. I really don’t think those attacks by insinuation are worthy of you,” Clinton continued.

It doesn’t take much in the way of “art” or “innuendo” or “insinuation” to point out that Clinton bashes Wall Street while taking millions in donations and up to $675,000 a pop in speaking fees from too-big-to-fail firms like Goldman-Sachs.

DOG BITES MAN: “Clinton blasts Wall Street, but still draws millions in contributions.”