SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

THE GOP DEBATE – Tonight's GOP debate from New Hampshire was alive and vicious.  Eyes were on Marco Rubio, to see if he could continue the momentum he established in Iowa.  Rubio stumbled in the first part of the debate, under sustained attack by Chris Christie and others, but regained his footing later.  He didn't help himself and may have been hurt.  Some are calling this the "governors' debate" because the governors, present and former – Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush – had their best debate nights.Ben Carson was barely a factor and should drop out.  Ted Cruz, triumphant in Iowa, knows that New Hampshire is not friendly territory, and held his own.  Frontrunner Donald Trump neither helped nor hurt himself.  If you like Donald, he was fine.  If you don't like him, he was obnoxious.  The voting is Tuesday.  Last polls come out Monday.  It's up to the people. 

ISIS ISN'T ISLAMIC, KERRY SAYS – This will come as a surprise to ISIS fighters.  From Daily Caller:   At a conference in Rome of coalition members tasked with fighting ISIS, Secretary of State John Kerry said members of the terrorist organization are not Muslims but apostates of Islam.  “Daesh [ISIS] is in fact nothing more than a mixture of killers, of kidnappers, of criminals, of thugs, of adventurers, of smugglers and thieves,” Kerry said. “And they are also above all apostates, people who have hijacked a great religion and lie about its real meaning and lie about its purpose and deceive people in order to fight for their purposes.”  Kerry, like Obama, lets the Muslim world off the hook.  Not a good idea.  They're the ones primarily responsible for fighting ISIS.

WELL TIMED – As Woody Allen said, half of life is showing up.  From PJMedia.com:   An Australian woman whose partner of 10 years paid a hit team to murder her shocked the man by showing up at her own funeral.  Noela Rukundo's story is the stuff of a Lifetime miniseries. But it's the reaction of her husband when he saw her after believing she was dead that is more priceless than anything MasterCard can come up with.  Finally, she spotted the man she’d been waiting for. She stepped out of her car, and her husband put his hands on his head in horror.  “Is it my eyes?” she recalled him saying. “Is it a ghost?”  “Surprise! I’m still alive!” she replied.  The husband got nine years for incitement to murder.  There is no word on whether the wife got a reality show.

February 6, 2016