The Jackass Is Going Up The Hill!

Empowerment Series: Women With Weapons #53

Hundreds Of Christian Nigerian Girls Still Missing A Year After Kidnapping

Each day, #BringBackOurGirls campaigners wearing their trademark red gather at Unity Fountain in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.

"Solidarity forever, solidarity forever, we shall always fight for our girls," they chant. "All we are saying is bring back our girls now and alive!"

They're trying to keep up the momentum in the hopes of finding more than 200 missing Nigerian schoolgirls, who were abducted in the remote northeastern town of Chibok last April — and many others who have been kidnapped before and since then.

There have been dozens of reported sightings of the missing girls and even statements by the military that they had been rescued at one point. There was also an official announcement that a deal had been struck with the extremist group Boko Haram that abducted the girls. These have raised and dashed the hopes of the girls' brokenhearted families.

It has now been a year since the schoolgirls, who were preparing for exams, were spirited away in the middle of the night. A few managed to escape as they...

Live from the George Soros Secret Donor Retreat

SAN FRANCISCO—Wealthy liberals from across the country discussed strategy and finances this Sunday during the Democracy Alliance’s biennial donor confab, where the number of supported groups grew by more than a dozen and funding targets grew by tens of millions of dollars above previous years.

The contrasts are stark at this week’s meeting of the nation’s foremost liberal donor club. Flashy sports cars ferry climate crusaders to a luxury hotel, a private security company shields prying eyes from speeches on political accountability, and billionaire Democratic donors denounce money in politics.

The Alliance is a hub of liberal and Democratic fundraising. It steers tens of millions of dollars each year to leading political and policy groups strategically vetted and endorsed by its staff of progressive operatives.

“If there was an attack on this building, the Democratic donor base would be gone,” joked investor Joe Sanberg. “There are probably a lot of...

The Fed fears disaster in NYC, so it’s bulking up in Chicago

The New York branch of the U.S. Federal Reserve, wary that a natural disaster or other eventuality could shut down its market operations as it approaches an interest rate hike, has added staff and bulked up its satellite office in Chicago.

Some market technicians have transferred from New York and others were hired at the office housed in the Chicago Fed, according to several people familiar with the build-out that began about two years ago, after Hurricane Sandy struck Manhattan.

Officials believe the Chicago staffers can now handle all of the market operations that are done daily out of the New York Fed, which is the U.S. central bank’s main conduit to Wall Street.
The satellite office in the Midwest readies the New York Fed for perhaps the most delicate U.S. interest-rate hike ever. With rates having been near zero for more than six years, and markets flooded with reserves, the Fed will rely on...

Morning Mistress

Hot Pick Of The Late Night

Girls With Guns

Right On The Button!

That Moment You Realize....

Hillary 2016? There's Good News And There's Bad News...

The Good News:
You are officially no longer a Racist!

The Bad News:
You are now a Misogynist!

Marco Rubio Is A Serious Contender With Wide Appeal..

By HARRY ENTEN - Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign, which officially kicks off Monday, has so far attracted paltry support from Republican voters, according to polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as nationally. He’s down near Chris Christie! Yet, when we talk about him in the FiveThirtyEight office, we usually put Rubio in the top tier, in front of everyone except Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, the two candidates at the top of the polls.

Why? Rubio is both electable and conservative, and in optimal proportions. He’s in a position to satisfy the GOP establishment, tea party-aligned voters and social conservatives. In fact, Rubio’s argument for the GOP nomination looks a lot like Walker’s, and Rubio is more of a direct threat to the Wisconsin governor than he is to fellow Floridian Bush.

To win a presidential nomination, you need to make it past the party actors (i.e., elected officials and highly dedicated partisans). You can have all the strong early poll numbers in the world (hello, Rudy Giuliani), and your candidacy can still fail if party bigwigs come out against you. Rubio has a real chance of surviving — or even winning — the invisible (or endorsement) primary.

Rubio doesn’t have the flaws the other two official GOP candidates have. He’s a hawk on foreign policy (with an 89 percent conservative foreign policy score in National Journal’s vote ratings), so he’ll be able to avoid the pitfalls of Rand Paul’s candidacy. And Rubio isn’t anywhere near as extreme as Ted Cruz and has not alienated his fellow senators, so we shouldn’t expect mainstream party members coming out of the woodwork to stop Rubio. But he’s a solid conservative; statistical ideological ratings put him right in line with the average Republican in the...