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SENATORS TED CRUZ and Bernie Sanders scored key victories yesterday in their White House quests, but it was Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton who outperformed their rivals to remain the race’s undisputed frontrunners.
Republican Trump and Democrat Clinton did what they needed to do – dominating in the delegate-rich state of Louisiana in performances that keep them on top at a critical point in the US presidential race.
Results from contests in five states were split, but one element was clear: with Cruz taking Kansas and Maine, he boosted his claim as the most viable alternative to billionaire Trump, and put poorly performing Senator Marco Rubio under immense pressure to turn his campaign around or bow out.
“Thank you to Louisiana, and thank you to Kentucky,” Trump said in Florida, minutes after he was also projected to be the winner in Kentucky, where he led Cruz by four percentage points.
For Republicans, the races provide the first tests of whether the establishment’s desperate effort to halt Trump, led this week by 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, is having any effect on voters.
Trump declared those establishment efforts a failure, and called on Rubio, seen by many political observers as the best hope to defeat Trump, to pack it in.
“Marco Rubio had a very, very bad night. Personally I’d call for him to drop out of the race,” Trump said.
“I would love to be able to take on Ted one on one,” he added. “That will be easy.”
Beyond the delegate count, Cruz and Sanders can claim momentum as they head toward critical races in Michigan next Tuesday and then winner-take-all races in the large states of Florida and Ohio on March 15.
The brash real estate mogul is ahead in the all-important delegate count for Republicans, having now won 12 of the 19 states that have voted since Iowa kicked off the race last month.
But Cruz’s wins are a reminder that while Trump still appears to be the likely nominee, it is by no means inevitable.
The conservative senator performed beyond expectations in Kansas, where he earned 48.2% support, doubling up on Trump who received 23.3%.
Rubio was third at 16.7%, followed by Ohio Governor John Kasich with 10.7%.
In Maine, it was a startling 13-point win for the arch-conservative Cruz in the more moderate New England region.
Centrist candidate Romney won Maine caucuses twice, in 2012 and 2008, but it was a disaster for the current establishment favorite Rubio, who finished fourth there Saturday.
Cruz exulted in his victories during a campaign rally in Idaho.
“The scream you hear – the howl that comes from Washington, DC – is utter terror at what we the people are doing together,” he said, adding that conservatives are “coming together… and standing as one behind this campaign.”
Momentum
The Republican race has been winnowed to four men: political outsiders Trump and Cruz, and more mainstream candidates Rubio and Kasich. Many in the Republican establishment are apoplectic over whether anyone can stop Trump’s march.
On the Democratic side, it was self-described democratic socialist Sanders who savored victories in Kansas and Nebraska, pushing his total to seven of the 18 Democratic contests.
“We’ve got the momentum, the energy and the excitement that will take us all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia,” Sanders said in a statement.
But Clinton decisively swept Louisiana, seen as the weekend’s big prize, with 59 Democratic delegates at stake compared to 37 for Kansas and 25 for Nebraska.
The former secretary of state dominated in Louisiana, with its substantial African-American vote.
Sanders did well in the other two states in part because of their substantial white populations, a demographic with which Sanders does well.
Maine, also overwhelmingly white, holds its Democratic caucus Sunday.
Can’t they just sell some bitcoins to cover the losses
No because they claim all BTC have been stolen, but they got hacked and database leak says otherwise
It’s all fugazi
My advice if you have a few bob spare is invest one weekends drink money in lite coins. Created by Google engineers its an alternative to bit coin and a couple of years behind it. When you consider a bit coin was what a few euro and jumped up to 700 or so at one point. A lite coin is about 11 euro a coin. If anything you cash out in months with what you invest I do see it climbing.
You could mine then but jesus its painful and even if you have best pc its not worth it
I got 2,200 xrp free – ripple. Waiting to see what happens. Sat on my free mined bitcoins for a couple of years thinking they would never be worth anything, how wrong I was :)
Thanks. Going to look into that.
Do check it out :) mining a bit coin your talking years to wsrn one coin in which case you fried a few gpu’s and a esb bill of small country. They are expensive to but also hundred for one.
That’s why I think lite coins could work. Would you really miss €100 next year if it falls apart but could get nice little return. There is few sites where you can see how much bit and lite coins ate trafing against $£€
@eye c u depends on the hashing power you have. If you have a knc 2 terrahash miner you will mine a couple of bitcoins a year at current difficulty. Scrypt based coins like litecoin/dogecoin are cheaper for the average person to get involved in. BTW you never told us how you got those scars?
From dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. I told you that last week.
The sooner this renegade stops dragging out its 15 minutes the better it’ll be for Bitcoin as a whole!
You just have to love the word “allegedly”!
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