Two days ago, the U.S. said it targeted Georgian ISIS military leader Omar (Umar) al Shishani (originally from the Russian Caucasus) in an airstrike in al-Shadadi, Syria. The U.S. said he was believed to be dead. (Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, been high on the U.S. designated terrorist list for a while. )

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (which is highly critical of ISIS) yesterday said Shishani was badly injured in the strike but was not killed. He's been transferred to a hospital in Raqqa, where he's being treated by a European jihadist doctor. [More...]

CNN is having another Republican debate tonight. I just tuned in. Trump looks very orange on my screen. Rubio does not. So it's not my TV. All four remaining Republican hopefuls are participating.

Thoughts on the debate?

Update: Trump says Ben Carson will endorse him tomorrow.

Update: John Kasich wants to cut social security benefits. Goodbye. Not acceptable.

Update: Trump is very low key (for him) tonight. He sounds more like he does in post-primary/caucus press conferences than his usual debate mode.

There was another Democratic debate last night, sponsored by the Washington Post and Univision. The full transcript is here. The Washington Post says Hillary was grilled on tough topics like a potential indictment, Benghazi, and polls finding the American public don't think she's honest and trustworthy. After saying she takes responsibility, she adds (from the transcript:)

Look, I have said before and it won't surprise anybody to hear me say it, this is not easy for me. It's not easy to do what I think is right, to help people, to even the odds...

I am not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed, like my husband or President Obama. So I have a view that I just have to do the best I can, get the results I can, make a difference in people's lives, and hope that people see that I'm fighting for them and that I can improve conditions economically and other ways that will benefit them and their families.

[More...]

Trump wine, Trump Water and a butcher block of Trump Steaks line the podium where Donald Trump is about to speak about his victories today in Michigan and Mississippi.

This is a small press conference with a limited number of invited guests.

He enters to big cheers. He's never had such horrible lies spread about him in one week. The public is brilliant, they knew they were lies immediately. [More...]

Tonight 2 states vote for their preferred candidates in the GOP and Dem races - Michigan and Mississippi.

Hilary Clinton is a heavy favorite to win Mississippi and also favored in Michigan. Trump is favored in both contests in the GOP race.

After tonight a 1/3 of delegates will have been chosen.

I suspect the Dem Mississippi race will be called when the polls close at 8 p.m. Michigan polls close at 9 and it might take longer.

More as results roll in.

The Trump opposition forces are in full swing mode. Now they say his asking rally goers to raise their right hand (as if in a courtroom) and swear to vote for him is an intentional play on the Nazi salute.

Michael Bloomberg has joined the Anti-Trump forces:

"I have known Mr. Trump casually for many years, and we have always been on friendly terms," Bloomberg said in his Monday announcement. "But he has run the most divisive and demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people’s prejudices and fears. Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party, appealed to our 'better angels.' Trump appeals to our worst impulses."

[More...]

Thread.

VAIO U.S.A., the Japanese company that bought the Sony VAIO line from Sony, has released the Z and S versions of its new laptops. I really want this one. I want to be her, sitting at a rustic table in the woods with a glass of wine, surfing through leisure sites on my shiny new laptop that weighs under 3 pounds. (Instead of bringing my 6 pounder to the jail, where it's searched as I enter a cramped visiting room for hours at a time to review discovery and listen to wiretapped calls with my clients. Not that I mind going to the jail with my computer for visits, I actually enjoy it, but I hate lugging the 6 pounder with me.)

Here's the question I ask myself (in my mind, its how I imagine Reggie would ask it on the Late Late Show with James Corden.)

So if you had this new laptop, would you fly off to a magical, peaceful place to be alone with the computer and spend your time looking at extravagant items while drinking a glass of wine, and would the wine be chardonnay or something else? [More...]

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan has died at age 94 of congestive heart failure.

No personal attacks on her in comments please. We don't speak ill of the dead here on the occasion of their death.

After the Kentucky results came in last night, Trump gave a press conference (see my last post for a recap.) During it, he touted his campaign rally in Orlando earlier in the day. He said there were 20k people at the event, and they turned another 10k people away. This got me curious. Who goes to these rallies, and what does he say at them that makes so many people want to attend? Does he give the same speech at his rallies that he does during debates and in press conferences?

To answer my questions, I watched his very long speech in Orlando. I'm assuming you won't want to, so here's a recap.

His opening words were like a shout out to the uneducated (who of course wouldn't realize it.) He said:

We're not going to be the stupid country anymore. We're not going to be the stupid people anymore. We're going to be a smart people.

[More...]

Donald Trump is giving a press conference from Palm Beach, following his wins today in Louisiana and Kentucky. He congratulated Ted Cruz on his two wins (Maine and Kansas) and says it's time to make it a 2 person contest, between him and Cruz.

Trump calls on Rubio to drop out. He says Rubio has to get out of the race, it's time. He hasn't won anything. He says he is saying this respectfully.

Trump says he will beat Cruz. (He says it's no surprise he didn't win Kansas and Maine since he only spent 2 hours in each state. He was in Kansas this morning.) Cruz cannot take New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania or California.[More...]

Well, a caucus and primary day with caucuses in Nebraska and Kansas and a primary in Louisiana.

Clinton should win big in Louisiana and lose by some margin in the caucuses. I don;t know the story on the GOP side.

I'll get some more info and provide it as I find it. 1 interesting story seems to be absentee ballots in Nebraska which are breaking heavily for Clinton from what I'm hearing. Might narrow Sanders margin.

On the GOP side, Cruz apparently sweeping Kansas and leading in Maine.

I'm surprised the U.S. media isn't all over the reports of Amr al Absi (aka Abu al-Athir,) being killed in an airstrike. He's not only a big deal in ISIS, he reportedly was involved in the imprisonment of kidnapped foreign journalists, including James Foley (whom ISIS likely inherited from the group who actually kidnapped them.

Experts say Absi orchestrated the defection of a large number of foreign fighters from the al-Qaeda-aligned Jahbat al-Nusra during Isil's rocky early months in 2013. One of those men was Mohamed Emwazi, the Briton who would go on to be Isil’s most notorious executioner.

...The jihadist is understood to have overseen the kidnapping or purchase of a number of journalists and aid workers, among them the American reporter James Foley and British taxi driver Alan Henning, whose videotaped murders Emwazi would later become famous as ‘Jihadi John’.

I've mentioned al Absi and his murdered brother Firas in several posts, see here and here. Here's one of the principal source articles I relied on. [More...]

What an odd coupling: 84 year old Rupert Murdoch and 59 year old Jerry Hall (former Texas model and mother of 4 children with Mick Jagger) have gotten married. All ten of their children from prior relationships participated.

Murdoch, the Chairman of News Corp, the parent of Fox News, is reportedly worth more than 12 billion. Her net worth is reportedly 15 million.

Hall and Jagger were married in a ceremony in Bali in 1990 but it was later ruled invalid. (They split in 1999.)

The Rolling Stones are performing in Peru this weekend.

The world will never move on from OJ Simpson. Here's the newest development with the testing of the knife a cop held onto reportedly found at OJ's Buckingham estate.