Today's LBN E-Lert

ROMNEY POISED TO WIN NEVADA: Mitt Romney is looking to clean up in Saturday’s caucus in Nevada—he won the state with 51 percent of the vote in 2008. A survey commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and 8NewsNow reported that Romney had 45 percent support of likely caucus-goers, with 25 percent going for Newt Gingrich, 11 percent for Santorum and Ron Paul coming in fourth with 9 percent. Part of Romney’s success comes from the state’s large Mormon population, which accounted for 25 percent of his voters in 2008 and could be a huge factor this time round. Despite the low poll numbers, Paul is hoping to come in second as the Texas congressman hopes to pick up votes in the rural Nevada counties, where he has been aggressively campaigning.

THOUSANDS PROTEST PUTIN IN RUSSIA: The bitter cold in Moscow didn’t deter protesters Saturday, as an estimated 100,000 marched against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the largest protest yet while smaller protests were organized across the country. At the same time, thousands of others staged a Moscow rally in support of the embattled leader. Police said 90,000 were at the pro-Putin rally. But some were suspicious of the large numbers of Putin supporters since many trade unions have been known to pressure their members to attend.The protests are timed one month ahead of the country’s March 4 presidential election, which Putin is expected to win.

OBAMA: ASSAD’S RULE MUST END: President Obama on Saturday issued the strongest statement yet on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying his “regime must come to an end.” “The United States and our international partners support the Syrian people in achieving their aspirations and will continue to assist the Syrian people toward that goal,” Obama said in an official White House statement. “The suffering citizens of Syria must know: we are with you, and the Assad regime must come to an end.” The statement comes on the same the day the United Nations Security Council met in New York to draft a resolution on ousting Assad from power, and just hours after reports of a deadly massacre occurred in the city of Homs, with hundreds estimated to have been killed.

PAUL DEFENDS ROMNEY’S ‘POOR’ COMMENT: Sometimes we wonder about Ron Paul. At one moment he’ll say something intelligent, only to follow up with a statement that makes him look like a fool. In an appearance on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” Paul defended Romney’s now famous comment about the very poor earlier this week, saying he thinks the comment was blown out of proportion. “I don’t believe for a minute that if Mitt Romney was sitting here, that if he released everything in his heart, he’d say: ‘You know what, the truth is, I really don’t care about poor people.’” But he stressed that he didn’t agree with his Republican rival on any of his policies, and even blamed his economic theories for what Romney later conceded was a “misstatement” about poor people.

ARI FLEISCHER INVOLVED IN KOMEN: As if the last few days haven’t been difficult enough for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, now it’s been revealed that former George W. Bush press secretary and current GOP operative Ari Fleischer helped the organization find a new senior VP for communications. Fleischer confirmed that he was involved in the search for a fee, but Think Progress is reporting his role extended into grilling candidates about how they would handle Komen’s partnership with Planned Parenthood. Given that Komen has come under fire for politicizing cancer screening, this latest revelation could complicate its efforts to repair the damage done by the scandal.

OCCUPY D.C. TENTS REMOVED: Looks like Occupy D.C. protesters will have to find somewhere else to lay their heads at night. Police have been taking down tents and other structures at the encampment—formerly known as the “Tent of Dreams”—in Mcpherson square early Saturday morning, days after the National Park Police ordered the protesters to stop camping. Police entered the encampment around 5:30 a.m. and began collecting pallets and other itemsfrom the campers. Four arrests have been made, but officials are mostly focused on taking down the camp ground. Police insist they’re not evicting the protesters, who are allowed to stay there during daytime hours.

THE GREAT DIVORCE: Read more at the LBN *Extra* blog, click here.

COLORADO HIT BY MASSIVE BLIZZARD: It’s a snowy weekend in Colorado. The season’s first major snowstorm dumped up to six feet of snow in the Rocky Mountain foothills and one to two feet in Denver. Near-zero visibility caused officials to close all 160 miles of westbound Interstate 70 between the Kansas state line and Denver. Travelers mostly heeded warnings to stay inside, and the accident rate was low. Some 600 flights were canceled out of Denver International Airport. The storm has moved eastward, dumping 13 inches of snow on Nebraska.

ROMNEY FIRES GOP OPERATIVE: It looks like the Republican campaigns might be happy to leave Nevada behind them. Mitt Romney has fired one his chief Republican operatives, Brett O’Donnell, late Friday night—apparently due to staff tensions over O’Donnell taking too much credit for Romney’s comeback. O’Donnell had been a former top aid to Michele Bachmannn and had been working as consultant for Romney—and has been credited with turning around Romney’s debate performances. Internal strife within the Romney camp occurred after O’Donnell had taken center stage in the media after Romney’s Florida win. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich’s Nevada campaign has withered down to just a bare-bones staff working in a tiny rented space in the days before the state’s caucus. One Las Vegas-based Republican operative said Gingrich’s bad week—he was snubbed by the Republican mayor and Donald Trump—reflects the differences of “a four-year campaign versus a four-day campaign.”

BLAST NEAR CALIF. MARINE BASE: One person was killed and two people were injured in a propane gas explosion Friday night near a U.S. Marine Corps training base in northern California. The blast occurred around 9 p.m. Friday in the privatized military housing unit of Coleville, about 30 miles from the U.S. Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center near Bridgeport, California. Thirty-eight families were evacuated after the explosion. A base spokesman said “two separate families” had been impacted by the blast, but he did not know its cause.

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CHARACTER ACTOR BEN GAZZARA DIES: Veteran actor Ben Gazzara, who appeared in over 100 films and TV series over his 60-year career, died Friday in New York City at the age of 81. The cause was pancreatic cancer. Gazzara made his move debut in 1957’s The Strange One. He then turned to television in the 1960s, starring for two years in the NBC crime series Run for Your Life. He partnered with John Cassavetes in The Killing of the Chinese Bookie in 1976 andOpening Night in 1977. Later in life, he had a career revival with roles in Summer of Sam and The Big Lebowski. Gazzara is survived by his wife of 30 years, Elke, a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, Anthony.

U.N.: 2011 DEADLIEST FOR AFGHAN CIVILIANS: Afghan civilian deaths hit a record high in 2011, making it the worst year for them since the U.S. invasion began, according to a United Nations study released Saturday. The report said 3,021 civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent increase since 2010—and the fifth consecutive year that the number of deaths increased. The insurgency was responsible for 2,332 of the causalities, and civilians were often the target of the attacks rather than merely collateral damage from attacks on military personnel. The report attributed 400 of the deaths to NATO and Afghan forces, a small decrease from 2010, and said aerial attacks were responsible for about half of those deaths. The news comes just days after Defense Secretary Leon Panettasaid the U.S. would remove its combat forces from Afghanistan as early as mid-2013.

LANCE ARMSTRONG INVESTIGATION CLOSED: Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong must be breathing a sigh of relief. Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they were dropping their investigation into whether he committed any crimes—like defrauding the government, money laundering, or drug trafficking—by doping. At issue was Armstrong’s main team sponsor: the United States Postal Service. Investigators were looking into whether government money went to purchase performance-enhancing drugs. Prosecutors did not say why they were dropping the investigation, but released a statement confirming the matter had been closed. Armstrong has denied that he ever doped.

‘HUNDREDS’ KILLED IN SYRIAN CITY: An estimated 260 people had been killed and hundreds others were injured by Syrian security activists in Homs on Saturday, according to opposition leaders in the country. “They’re ready to kill us all,” said Homs resident Abu Abdo Alhomsy. Activists saidthat the army used tanks, mortars and machine guns in the Khaldiyeh neighborhood, in what was believed to be an attack launched in retaliation after the opposition group Free Syrian Army attacked the government checkpoints and killed an estimated 10 soldiers. Reports were hard to get out of the city, and the Syrian government denied the high death toll. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council will meet on Saturday in New York to discuss Syria—and could vote on a draft resolution that would pressure the government to end the deadly crackdown.

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LBN-BOOK NEWS:   ***New York Times bestselling author action-procedural writer William Diehl’s final novel, Seven Ways to Die will launch exclusively on Barnesandnoble.com February 6, 2012 supported by a multi-pronged promotion. At the same time, four previous novels by Diehl, Thai Horse, Chameleon, Hooligans, and 27 will also become available on B&N. On Diehl’s death in 2007, Atchity Entertainment, working with Cairo-Simpson Entertainment, took over the management of Diehl’s estate from William Morris by agreement with Diehl’s widow, Virginia Gunn. Diehl’s previous novels, including Primal Fear, Sharky’s Machine, Eureka, 27, and Hooligans were all New York Times bestsellers, “and we feel certain Seven Ways to Die will please Bill’s loyal readers just as much,” Atchity said.   ***Radio anchor and author Bob Brill has just released ”NO BARRIER: How the Internet Destroyed the World Economy.” A 200 page book with a forward by internationally recognized economist/lecturer Dr. Pamela Falk. It is available on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99 as a download.

I,LBN: Mark Leffont, an LBN E-Lert reader from Selma, Alabama.

LBN-COMMENTARY By MICHAEL LEVINE: We have become the United States of “Deferred Maintenance”. China, by contrast, is the People’s Republic of “Deferred Gratification.”

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