South and Central Florida – where Romney did best – are full of transplants from the Northeast. These are the same type of voters that catapulted Romney to the governor’s mansion in Massachusetts. I would expect Gingrich to sweep the South and do well in blue-collar places like Ohio where Romney will come off as an out-of-touch elite.

When Gingrich says that he will go all the way to the convention he means it, especially if Santorum drops out of the race. If you consolidate the anti-Romney vote in a state less hospitable to Romney than Florida then Gingrich has a decent shot at winning quite a few primaries. Romney might have won tonight, but this race is far from over. Expect a conservative backlash against Romney in the primaries to come – especially in the South.

Operation Bald Eagle is a new spy fiction book from author Kyle Bell. It tells the thrilling story of a CIA agent investigating a potential cyber-attack on U.S. soil. The book begins with a Chinese businessman attempting to purchase an American technology company with sensitive government contracts. An exciting car chase that leads them to the Golden Gate Bridge ends with their target dead and few leads to go on. All is not as it seems, though, as Ethan Clark will soon find out.

Who is Ethan Clark?

Ethan Clark is a middle-aged veteran of the CIA. He’s tough around the edges, sarcastic; some would even call him an asshole. His decades of experience have led to doubts about the role that America plays in the world. Things are not black and white. He sees the world in shades of gray.

Why should I care?

Fans of spy novels, movies and video games will find that Operation Bald Eagle draws inspiration from familiar franchises. While Ethan Clark is in many ways an anti-Bond hero, Operation Bald Eagle’s larger-than-life villains will challenge even the most memorable bad guys in the Bond universe. Operation Bald Eagle goes back to the roots of the spy genre and makes it relevant to a 21^st century world.

Where can I buy?

Operation Bald Eagle is available at multiple online retailers for $3.99 including Amazon, Smashwords and Kobo. Barnes & Noble, Apple’s iBookstore and Sony will soon follow. See the links below!

Amazon
Smashwords
Kobo

South Bend, Indiana - January, 25, 2012 – Operation Bald Eagle has launched on Amazon.com and Smashwords for $3.99 with Barnes & Noble, Apple’s iBookstore and Kobo to follow in the weeks to come. A paperback version will be released later in 2012.

http://amazon.com/Operation-Bald-Eagle-ebook/dp/B0070TQEYA/
http://smashwords.com/books/view/102184

Agent Ethan Clark faces one of his most daunting challenges yet in this spy thriller that sends the CIA veteran from San Francisco to Taiwan. The Chinese attempt to acquire a highly valued American technology company with sensitive U.S. government contracts. Intelligence suggests that a possible cyber-attack is in the works, but all is not as it seems.

“Operation Bald Eagle is a story of resolve in the face of adversity,” said author Kyle W. Bell. “The world of Ethan Clark is dominated by overwhelming corporate power and government corruption. Politics gets in the way of the job. Fortunately, people with good intentions still work on behalf of the American public – even when everything seems hopeless.”

Fans of the book are encouraged to “like” the Operation Bald Eagle page on Facebook at http://facebook.com/pages/Operation-Bald-Eagle/185568411534991

About the Author

Kyle W. Bell holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Indiana University South Bend. He calls South Bend his home where he was born and raised. He has always been an avid writer. At the age of twenty-three, he likes to think that his youth gives him the freedom to write openly and refrain from being overly cynical.

Kyle’s main interests include writing, reading books, keeping tabs on the news, watching sports and being with both friends and family. In 2003, he founded the video game news and review website Game Freaks 365. His interest in politics drove him to create KyleBell.com in 2007, a political blog meant to generate ideas and debate on policy, as well as current events.

He is the recipient of the Indiana Black Expo’s Martin Luther King Junior Award. It was won in an essay contest in 2002 writing about the perils of racial profiling in the wake of 9/11. The following year he was awarded with the Presidential Award for excellence in education. In 2011 his writing on sports development appeared in Indiana University South Bend’s Undergraduate Research Journal.

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Feel free to send an e-mail to kwb at kylebell dot com if you are interested in a review copy for your website, newspaper or blog. Available formats include PDF, Kindle, ePub and more. I am also available for interview upon request.

This next ad is running in South Carolina after Gingrich lost in Iowa and New Hampshire:

Of course Gingrich’s ad is softball compared to what George W. Bush did to John McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 Republican primary. McCain was accused of fathering an illegitimate black child and it cost him big time. The Arizona senator lost by 11 points after having pulled off a major New Hampshire upset. Can Gingrich manage to derail Newt with similar negative attack ads? The tightening polls certainly indicate that he could. Of course this time, unlike with McCain, Romney will deserve the verbal beating on television.

Super PACs have outspent Republican candidates by more than 2 to 1 in Iowa and other early primary states this election cycle, according to data from the Federal Election Commission and Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks ad spending. The gulf is even wider when the picture is broadened to include other independent groups, many of which already haves spots on the air in Colorado, Ohio and states that are likely to be key battlegrounds in November.

The clearest beneficiary of the onslaught has been former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who was able to fend off a last-minute surge by former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) with the help of more than $4 million in advertising from Restore Our Future, a super PAC staffed by former Romney advisers. Romney’s campaign spent relatively little ad money in Iowa.

Democracy is for sale. The only real winner? Large corporations looking to legally bribe politicians (or punish them for voting the “wrong” way).

Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.

The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not “support our troops” by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The “American way of life” is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

Obama is not going to indefinitely detain American citizens, at least abusively to target political opponents. However, could you imagine this kind of power in the hands of a man like Richard Nixon? Obama will only be in office for – at the most – five more years. Do Democrats mean to say that they trust this kind of power with a Republican president? Would they be defending George W. Bush if he had signed this into law? The hypocrisy is astounding. Signing this bill is the single biggest mistake of President Obama’s career.

The facts are not on his side. Right-to-work states like South Carolina have a considerably higher unemployment rate than Indiana (10.5% vs. 9%) and their workers have lower wages. Daniels should get his talking points straight before he makes false and misleading claims about the jobs situation in Indiana. Unions are not the problem, Indiana Republicans’ willingness to sacrifice wages and workplace safety is the problem.

Daniels goes on to claim that, “I’d be completely opposed to this if it affected the right to organize. But every right-to-work state has unions and some of them have a higher percentage of union members than Indiana does. I’d be completely against anything that reduced the right to organize. This is only about whether you have to pay the dues or don’t.”

I’ll give the governor credit, he knows how to weasel out of his positions – at least rhetorically – even while still maintaining them. The bill has nothing to do with jobs and everything to do with killing unions. Right-to-work is a way to drain a union’s resources. If you can benefit from a union and not have to pay for it then who would offer up their dues? It’s called free-riding. For a party that would love to see all resistance to corporate power crushed, right-to-work makes a good deal of sense.

The withdrawal doesn’t mean that the U.S. presence has ended. As CNN points out: “The United States will still maintain a presence in Iraq: hundreds of nonmilitary personnel, including 1,700 diplomats, law enforcement officers, and economic, agricultural and other experts, according to the State Department. In addition, 5,000 security contractors will protect Americans and another 4,500 contractors will serve in other roles.”

The U.S. embassy in Iraq is the largest in the world despite the two countries having little in common culturally or economically. They don’t even share a border. Why we need over 11,000 people to man an embassy is anyone’s guess (I think you can surmise why we are still there), but should a civil war occur, a lot of Americans will be in harm’s way. It is almost begging for another Iran hostage crisis to happen.