No Extradition For Brazile

It was made official today; CNN has severed all ties with DNC Chair Donna Brazile.  If you don't recall, the Wikileaks emails showed that while a CNN commentator, Brazile got an advance copy of some of the questions to be asked in a primary debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Brazile then fed the exact text of the questions to the Clinton campaign.  In other words, the chair of the Democrat National Committee helped rig the primary debates to favor Clinton over Sanders.  To be fair, Brazile was only the vice chair of the DNC at the time; the chair at that time was Debbie Wasserman Schultz who was later forced to resign when her actions to rig the presidential selection process to favor Clinton was uncovered.

It's interesting that CNN has finally severed ties to Brazile.  After all, when the story of Brazile feeding the questions to Clinton first broke, CNN issued a statement denying that it happened.  The next day, Wikileaks released emails from Brazile to the campaign setting forth the exact wording of the questions in advance of the debate.  CNN then shut up.  One does wonder why it took CNN so many weeks to cut ties with Brazile.

It's also worth noting that no one at the Clinton campaign reported the slimy and possibly illegal move by Brazile to send over the debate questions ahead of time.  Maybe it's time for CNN to cut ties to the Clinton campaign.

There Must Be Some Really Bad Stuff In Those New Emails

America just got the clearest possible indication that there is some really bad stuff for Hillary Clinton in those new emails from Anthony Weiner/Huma Abedin's home computer.  It comes in the form of the White House reaction to the situation.

Hillary Clinton and her allies are in all out war directed at FBI director Jim Comey.  According to the Clintonistas and the Democrats, Comey violated the law and FBI protocols by telling Congress that the criminal investigation into Clinton had been reopened.  They think that Comey was obligated to sweep the new evidence of possible criminality under the carpet until after the election.  This morning, the White House press corps asked Josh Earnest for the official presidential comment on what Comey has done.  Here are a few quotes from the official White House position:

1.  Comey is a man of integrity and character.

2.  President Obama does not believe that Comey was trying to influence the outcome of the election.

3.  When asked if Comey should come forward to explain all the details of what is happening, Earnest said that Obama believes that our democracy is well served by the FBI and DOJ limiting discussions of investigations.

4.  Obama believes Comey has a very difficult job, Obama thinks very highly of Comey and Obama has full confidence in Comey.

There's more, but it is all of the same general drift.  President Obama is fully supporting Comey and his conduct.  This means that there must really be bad stuff in those emails.  Obama is not going to get even a millimeter closer to that mess if he can avoid it.  Instead, he is going to support the FBI for doing its job.

Think about it.  If you had to predict this morning whether or not president Obama would come down on the side of Hillary Clinton or of James Comey, who would have predicted this?  Not very many people -- that's for sure.

The Hillary Media Goes All In with the Lie

Yesterday, the scum who is the leader of the Democrats in the US senate, Harry Reid, came out with another of his "big lie" moves.  There's really nothing that could be said about the reopening of the FBI's criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton.  The review of some 650,000 emails is just beginning.  We don't know yet if there's enough there to send Hillary to the big house rather than the White House.  So Reid went to his usual playbook and just lied.  He sent a letter to the FBI director telling director Comey that his notification to Congress that the investigation had been reopened was illegal and criminal.  Get it?  Hillary and her email system that threatened disclosure of all sorts of highly sensitive national secrets is not the criminal.  No, it's the FBI director who is the criminal according to Reid because the director had the nerve to tell Congress what was happening.  In Reid's world, telling the truth is a crime.

If there were any doubt that this big lie was a coordinated move, it disappeared this morning.  The pro-Hillary mainstream media is going all in with the lie.  For example, the Hearst newspapers in Connecticut are running a story about Hillary's emails under a headline that says that the FBI director's move may be criminal according to Reid.  There is no other story that covers the substance of the matter.  Hearst has just pushed the Reid lie and ignored the real story.

It's disgusting to watch the media try so hard to distract attention from Hillary Clinton's criminal activities.  For weeks, we've been watching the Wikileaks emails coming out each day, emails that show the corruption of Hillary and Bill and the disreputable nature of her campaign.  Hearst did not cover that story because the emails were supposedly stolen by Russian hackers.  Then the FBI (which has not yet been accused by the Clintons of being a Russian front agency) reopens the criminal investigation into Hillary and it gets scant coverage in the same paper.  But when Harry Reid blatantly lies about the FBI director, we get front page headlines.

Hillary and the Dems Go For the Biggest Lie Ever

In the annals of dirty politics, smear jobs, and dirty tricks, the campaign of Hillary Clinton has been right up there with the Nixon campaign and Watergate.  We now know that Clinton sent people to start violence at Trump rallies so that she could condemn the violence the next day.  We've seen lie after lie come from Hillary's lips to the point where the only people in America who think Hillary is honest are those who are blind, deaf and dumb.  But now they've hit a new low.

The FBI Director told Congress that the bureau was required to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton's possible criminal behavior.  It's a body blow to the Clinton campaign.  The response from Hillary and the rest of her crime family has been to go all out to attack the FBI Director.  Now, they've gone for the biggest lie of all.  Senator Harry Reid -- who is a known liar -- just accused the FBI director of suppressing proof that Donald Trump has close ties to Vladimir Putin and Russia.  This is the same Harry Reid who famously and falsely told the country in 2012 that Mitt Romney hadn't paid taxes in ten years.  When that was proven false, Reid never apologized.  Reid has made similar charges about Trump and his taxes.  But now, Reid says that the FBI director is suppressing proof of ties between Trump and Russia.  It's a mega-lie.

The interesting thing, of course, is that the one lobbying firm in Washington for which there is evidence that the firm is working for Russian government interests is The Podesta Group, a firm which of course is tied closely to the head of Hillary Clinton's campaign, John Podesta.  If there are any ties between Putin and any US candidate, those ties are likely with Hillary Clinton.  But that does not stop Reid.  He just goes out there and lies and lies and lies.

It's truly disgusting.  We have an entire party, the Democrats, who seem unable to stop telling lies.  Just think of Obama and what he said about Obamacare, Hillary and what she said about emails and now Reid and what he has said about Trump and Russia.  Are the Democrats so bereft of good or even mediocre ideas that they have to resort to lies about their opponents to try to maintain power?  it sure seems so.

Keep The Source In Mind

I just heard a pundit on TV talk about former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick who said that there is a rule that no indictments can be issued within 60 days of an election, so what FBI Director Comey did in reopening the Hillary Clinton criminal investigation was improper.

It's worth keeping in mind just who the source of this supposed information really is.  Jamie Gorelick was indeed the deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration.  Then in the late 1990s, Gorelick was rewarded with the position of vice chairman of Fannie Mae.  She had no experience in banking or mortgages, but she was made the number two person at the biggest mortgage agency/company in the nation.  She resigned six years later after a ten billion dollar accounting scandal at Fannie Mae, an area she supposedly supervised.  Even so, Gorelick was paid just under thirty million dollars for her few years of work at Fannie Mae.  That's five million dollars a year for a part time job, a job that the Clintons got for her.  Does anyone doubt that Gorelick would say or do anything that the Clintons wanted her to say?

If there really is an internal rule of the Justice Department that was broken by Comey, then lets hear about it from someone at the Justice Department, not some political hack who had to resign in disgrace years ago after a scandal and who owes the Clintons for getting her tens of millions of bucks.

Hillary's Understatement

Hillary Clinton is calling the renewed FBI criminal investigation of her something "unprecedented".

Each time I hear it, it makes me laugh.  Of course it's unprecedented.  There's never been a major party presidential candidate who was under investigation by the FBI during the campaign.  Necessarily, a reopened investigation will be unprecedented.  That doesn't make the investigation a bad thing.  Actually, the bad thing here is the misconduct by Hillary Clinton that led to the investigation.  It's Hillary's allegedly criminal actions that are unprecedented.

At Least There's No Punches in the Presidential Race -- Yet

In North Carolina, there was an actual physical attack by one candidate for the State Legislature on his opponent.  The Democrat candidate punch his GOP rival when they met on the street.  The Democrat was upset because there had been publicity in the district reporting on the Democrat's activities in the 1990s when he allegedly gave out recruitment literature for the Ku Klux Klan.  I haven't bothered to check out all the details of the charge, but it was definitely news some twenty years ago when the Democrat was fired as a middle school teacher for such alleged activity.  Needless to say, being a former recruiter for the Klan does not play well with most voters, so it is understandable that the Democrat would be upset that this news was out.  Nevertheless, punching one's opponent is probably not the best way to deal with the problem, especially since there is no known tie between the GOP candidate and the news breaking in the district.

Finally, we have something political that makes the presidential election campaign look good by comparison.

The Hillary Story Is Getting Worse For Her

The most alarming piece of information today came in a report by stellar reporter Catherine Herridge on Fox and Friends this morning.  Here's the essence of what she is reporting:

1.  The emails in question are on the home computer that Abedin and Weiner shared.

2.  The emails got to the home computer because Abedin forwarded them from her work account to her Yahoo personal account.  Abedin previously told the FBI that she had done that on occasion since it was easier to print the emails at home from the Yahoo account.

3.  The emails that were forwarded in this manner included many emails from or to Hillary Clinton as well as from or to Huma Abedin.   That means that the initial reporting by NBC and others that no Hillary emails were involved was FALSE.  Hillary's emails are very much involved.

4.  The emails were found by FBI agents from the New York office when they reviewed Weiner's computer as part of the investigation into his alleged sexting with an underage girl.  This means that the stories about the New York City police finding the emails or about a bunch of very junior FBI agents finding them are false.  The FBI agents assigned to the New York office are among the best in the Bureau.

So let's consider what this means. 

A.  The first question is whether or not these new emails include any which were not seen by the FBI in the initial investigation.  In other words, will the FBI find new information about the supposedly "private" emails that she deleted?  If so, it could be devastating to her position.

B.  The second question is whether or not any of these new emails contain classified information.  If the answer is yes, then it is clear that Huma Abedin broke the law.  No matter how one views the propriety or legality of Hillary and Huma using a private unsecured system, there is no one who would conclude that sending classified information to a Yahoo email account complies with the law.  We already know that Yahoo has been hacked on multiple occasions.  But it's not just Huma; Hillary is involved here too.  If Hillary knew that Huma was sending classified info to her Yahoo account and did not stop that, she too violated the law.  Even worse, if Hillary directed Huma to print emails while knowing that Huma would do so through Yahoo, Hillary violated the law.  This would not just be "careless"; it would be grossly negligent to the point that the intent issue would be satisfied even for Comey.

This is a major problem for Hillary Clinton.  She may now decide to stop calling on Comey to disclose what information he has.  It is one thing for a reporter on Fox News to announce this stuff; the other networks can ignore or slant the story.  If Comey came out and just said the same things that Katherine Herridge reported, Hillary's campaign might well be destroyed.

Let's put it this way:  the email scandal has been confusing and complicate from the beginning.  Many Americans still don't understand what happened.  One thing that everyone could understand, however, is that putting classified information on Yahoo, ON YAHOO, is both illegal and WRONG.

Looking At Hillary Clinton in a Crisis -- It's Not Good

The most amazing statement today came on Fox News Sunday.  Chris Wallace asked Robby Mook who leads the Clinton campaign if Hillary Clinton had asked Huma Abedin what was in the emails that were on the Abedin/Weiner computer that caused the FBI to reopen the criminal investigation into Hillary.  Mook confirmed that Hillary has not asked Huma Abedin what was in the emails.  When Wallace asked Mook why Hillary has not asked that question, Mook said that Wallace and he were "on the same page".  Mook said the he too wanted to know what was in those emails.

Think about that for a moment.  The head of the Clinton campaign just threw his candidate under the bus.  Mook basically said that he does not understand why Hillary has not asked Huma Abedin what was in the emails in question.  That's astounding a week before the election.  It does not bode well for Hillary.

But let's take it one step further.  Imagine that this were a major national security problem facing the nation and that Hillary were president.  She is out swinging hard at the FBI, but she didn't bother to ask her loyal aide for full and extremely relevant information?  Really?  How can she possibly decide how to respond without key information.  Indeed, how can she chart a course without the single most important information about the nature of the problem? 

Either Hillary has no idea how to handle a crisis or she already knows exactly what is in those emails and wants to be able to say that she doesn't.  If she asks Abedin, she cannot continue to deny knowledge.  That's actually a worse scenario than her being incompetent at handling a crisis.  It means that she knows that there are incriminating emails on that computer that would doom her if they were to come out.

It's Getting Really, Really Close -- Is Trump Actually Ahead Now?

The movement of the polls towards Trump and away from Hillary Clinton is continuing.  As of the moment, the Real Clear Politics Average in a four way race shows Clinton up by 3.4%.  That, however, may paint a misleadingly rosy picture for Hillary.

As we head into the last full week of campaigning, three things are happening:

1.  Even before the FBI reopened the criminal investigation into Clinton, the race was getting much closer.  Of the eight polls in the RCP average, only two contain any polling done after the FBI announcement.  Even for the two that include post-announcement data, the majority of the polling was done before the announcement.  That means that the race had become a statistical tie before the FBI got into the picture. State polls were also closing.  For example, this morning we got the NY Times/Siena poll in Florida (which stopped polling the day before the FBI announcement) showed a 4% lead for Trump.

2.  The polling organizations are no longer coming forward with polls showing huge leads for Clinton even while most others show it close.  We are getting close enough to the election, that the pollsters want to be accurate in order to preserve their reputations for the future.  Just look at a poll like the ABC tracking poll.  It has only been around for ten days.  At the start of the ten days, it was showing Hillary up by 12% on a repeated basis.  Now, just a few days later, it is showing Hillary up by 1%, a swing of 11%.  Those kinds of moves don't normally happen in presidential polling especially when other polls don't reflect that kind of massive move.  ABC and its pollster are being forced to be accurate by the impending election day.  If there is any doubt that ABC rigged the results of the early versions of the tracking poll, one only need look at today's news release.  ABC has a large section of today's release in which it tells voters not to worry about the big move towards Trump.  ABC tells us that there was a big move away from Bill Clinton in 1992, but he still won.

3.  The enthusiasm gap is starting to have a real impact.  In many of the polls, voters who had been leaning towards Clinton are now being classified as unlikely to vote.  It's not that they jump to Trump supporters, but rather that they decide they just won't bother to vote for Hillary.  One has to assume that this pattern will be intensified after the FBI revelation.  If just a few percent of Hillary's supporters stay home on election day, Trump will win.  On the other side, enthusiasm among Trump supporters for him is rising.  Those who were wavering after the video mess of a few weeks back are back supporting him again.  For example, independents who had gotten to about an even split a few weeks ago are back supporting Trump by at least a 20% margin.

The polls are all looking backwards, though.  If we were able to measure the race today, we might well find Trump in the lead.  We can tell from the numbers that in the two tracking polls that questioned voters after the FBI announcement that Trump was ahead in that portion of the results.  One has to wonder how the voters will react to Hillary's attack on the FBI director for daring to tell the nation that she is once again under criminal investigation.  I don't think that will solve her problem.  She remains the target of a criminal investigation.  She remains enmeshed in another never-ending scandal.  She makes clear what the next four years would be like with her in the White House.  And, worst for Hillary, she remains the one in the spotlight rather than Trump.  This year, whenever the focus has been on Hillary, her numbers have tanked.  When the focus has been on Trump, he too has fared poorly.  The longer the email scandal holds the main place in the media, the more likely a Trump victory becomes.

Now It's Getting Even More Bizarre

We have a reopened criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton.  That's the one definite thing we do know.  We also have heard from multiple sources that the emails that caused the case to be reopened were on the computer of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner and that it was many thousands of emails.  It's probably safe to consider that to be a fact as well, although there is no official confirmation of it.

We also have Hillary Clinton and her campaign (including much of the mainstream media) attacking the FBI for daring to reopen the case when new evidence appeared.  The FBI director went from paragon of virtue to a dishonest Republican hack in less time than it took to say the word "reopen".  The truth is that Comey did what he had to do.

Then there's all the contrary reports.  Is the Justice Department preventing the FBI from reviewing the emails that were discovered?  That's been reported today.  Did Loretta Lynch who recused herself from all matters pertaining to the Clinton investigation after her meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton suddenly insert herself back into this mess and did she try to prevent Comey from informing Congress that the investigation was underway once again?  That's been reported today.  Did the White House try to get Comey to keep the news from Congress and the American people?  That too has been reported today.  Do the emails that were found include some from and to Hillary Clinton that were never given to the FBI in the past?  There were reports today that said this was the case and also that it was not true.  Is Comey planning to come forward to lay out the important information that was found early next week?  Again, this was reported today.

It's really safe to say that there's an awful lot of BS being reported.

All we really know is that emails were found that caused the FBI to reopen the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton.  Comey told this to Congress.  Hillary and her allies went crazy attack Comey as a result and they called upon Comey to tell the nation what he now knows.  That's it. 

It is truly bizarre to watch the story get filled out with so much misinformation.

It's Amazing

I've been watching the Democrats and the mainstream media turn on the FBI director Jim Comey for daring to disclose that the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton has been re-opened.

Last Summer, Comey announced that while Clinton had been extremely careless with classified information and had lied to America, there would be no criminal charges brought.  At that point, the Democrats and the media said that Comey was wonderful, honorable, insightful, and nearly perfect.  In September, Comey released the interviews taken by the FBI in the Clinton investigation after Congress demanded access to these notes.  Comey put out the documents late on the Friday before Labor Day, a timing that brought public viewing of these documents to the lowest possible level.  It seemed like a political move, but for the Democrats and the media, Comey was wonderful, honorable, insightful and nearly perfect.

Now, Comey has told Congress that his prior testimony under oath that the criminal investigation was over was incorrect.  He told Congress that the investigation had been re-opened.  That's it!  Now the Democrats and the media say that Comey is terrible, sleazy, political and downright awful. 

It's all BS, but it still amazes me to see the full onslaught from the media and the Democrats on Comey.  Remember, the problem here is not that Comey told Congress that there is an ongoing investigation.  The problem is that Hillary Clinton acted in a way that was careless, unthinking and -- we will see -- criminal.  If Hillary had never set up a private unsecured email system, none of this would have happened.

The reality is that Comey's status as a near-criminal and terrible person is a product of the media.  Hillary Clinton, however, is a self made woman.

So Neera -- Soon To Be So Fara

Neera Tanden is the co-chair of Hillary Clinton's transition team.  At least Neera holds that position today.  In the latest batch of released emails from Wikileaks, Neera Tanden told John Podesta,

"Sometimes HRC/WJC have the worst judgment."

It's not often that an extremely high ranking aide to a candidate criticizes the poor judgment of the candidate.  It's even less frequent for that to happen in an election in which the candidate's judgment (or lack of judgment) has been such an important issue.

My guess is that Neera Tanden will soon be leaving the Clinton inner circle.  Hillary may have poor judgment, but she won't tolerate disloyalty.  Neera will soon be Fara.

Just Watch How Democrats Care About the Poor

I saw a video just now of a homeless black woman in Los Angeles who was sitting on Hollywood next to Donald Trump's star in the sidewalk.  She was holding a sign that read "Twenty million homeless and illegal aliens sleep on the street or in tents -- Vote Trump".  She was then attacked by a group of blacks and Latinos who ripped up he sign, scattered her possession that she had in a shopping cart, knocked her to the ground and kicked her.  The voice of one of the attackers can then be heard saying "I told you, I told you.  If you dish out hate like that, you will get hate in return."

See, if a homeless person supports Trump, it must be that she is dishing out hate, right?  To Democrats like the attackers, a homeless woman who wants to vote for Trump is worthy of physical attack.  The poor woman must be one of those in Hillary's basket of deplorables, right?

For years, I've listened to the Democrats like Hillary tell us how much they care about the poor while the GOP is just a bunch of racists.  The truth is really something quite different.  Democrats don't care about the poor; they only care about the votes of the poor.  If a poor homeless woman won't vote for the Democrats, then she must deserve to be beat up by thugs. 

It's truly disgusting.

The Media Tries To Help Clinton Again With The FBI Criminal Investigation Being Reopened

By now, many people know that the FBI reopened its criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails after the FBI found thousands of new emails on a computer owned by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner (her husband) during an investigation of Weiner for allegedly sexting with a 15 year old girl.  Huma Abedin is Hillary's closest aide.  She was traveling with Hillary yesterday when the news broke.  No doubt, Hillary asked Abedin what was on the computer that was found by the FBI.  Of course, when Hillary was forced to hold a five minute press conference to try to stem the damage, she didn't tell America what Abedin told her; instead, she called on the FBI to release all the information, something that she knows the FBI cannot do.

So how have the mainstream media played this?  It's really big news.  America has never had an election in which one candidate was the subject of an active FBI criminal investigation until now.  And we all know that there's no way that the FBI would have taken this step eleven days before the election unless the emails that they found were true bombshells, the sort of "smoking gun" that they did not find earlier.  The answer with the media is sadly predictable.  They are trying to protect Hillary as best as they can.

I heard the CBS News this morning.  CBS focused on two questions in its coverage:  1) Why did the FBI wait until now to release this news? 2) Will the FBI release all the information that it has, as requested by Hillary Clinton?  The CBS coverage only included the questions; no attempt was made to answer those questions.  In other words, CBS went only with the Clinton campaign talking points.  After all, the answers to those questions are rather obvious.  The FBI waited until now because it only got the information off the Weiner/Abedin computer two days ago.  The FBI won't release all the information it found, because it cannot legally do so.  Indeed, as Comey's original letter to Congress makes clear, much of the information found may be classified, something that the FBI needs to check.  Until the agents determine whether or not the thousands of emails are classified, they cannot release them even if they wanted.  Further, Hillary and CBS both know that the rules that govern the FBI prohibit release of information from an open criminal investigation.

When I saw how CBS reacted to the news, I decided to go to the most slanted news source I know.  I chose Yahoo News.  Yahoo News was not covering the email story.  Their headline was about whether or not Trump was splitting the Hispanic community and if that held a future danger for the GOP.  I searched through the Yahoo site and eventually found a small article on Hillary's email problems with the FBI, but one really had to look to find it.

I looked at some other mainstream media sites and found more efforts to help Hillary Clinton deal with this disaster for her campaign.  Some just pointed out over and over that we really don't know what the FBI has found and that it might be nothing.  That's true.  Of course, the FBI is smart enough to know that if it found nothing of importance, it would be suicidal to reopen the criminal probe of one of the major candidates.  Somehow, that fact was left out of the coverage. 

The truth is that this story won't go away no matter what the mainstream media does.  Hillary is going to have to tell America what was on Abedin's computer.  Better still, Hillary should have Huma Abedin release the copy of her computer data to the public.  If she followed the law, there won't be any classified information on that computer.  Such storage of classified info on a home computer would itself be a crime.  So let's assume that Hillary's closest aide is not a criminal, she could then easily release all the data on the computer.  Hillary already told us that we have a right to know about this; now, it's time for her to get that info to us.

Something To Remember About Hillary Clinton

Tonight we heard Hillary Clinton's reaction to the news that the FBI investigation into her private unsecured email system has been reopened.  Hillary held a short news conference to discuss today's bombshell news.  She challenged the FBI to release all the information so that the voters would have the whole story.  Of course, this was just another lie from Hillary.  The reality is something quite different.

1.  We all need to remember that the email in question was found on the home computers of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner.  The FBI got the computers as part of the criminal investigation of Weiner for sexting with a 15 year old girl.  That means that Abedin and Weiner have a complete copy of the emails in question.  If Hillary wants them all released, she doesn't have to ask the FBI; she just has to ask her aide and confidant Huma Abedin.  And we all know that if Hillary asked Huma to release these emails, Huma would comply in an instant.

If you think about it, what happened tonight is that Hillary could have announced that she was getting all the emails released immediately to the public.  Instead, Hillary asked the FBI to release these emails while knowing full well that the FBI cannot comply.  FBI and Justice Department rules do not let information be released in the middle of an investigation.  Hillary asked for the release to look good, but she knew that her request could not be granted.

2.  We also need to keep in mind that Hillary Clinton knows just how damaging this story could be to her.  Just think, Hillary actually held a news conference.  Okay, she just took a few questions, but that is more than she has taken in months other than at the presidential debates.  This story is such a big problem that she had to face the press.

3.  It would have been easy for Hillary to have said more tonight.  She could have told the American voters what was on Huma's computer.  She could have explained how the pervert Anthony Weiner had access to classified information or she could have told us that he did not have that access.  She chose instead to try to say nothing but to look like she was being open.

It was just another typical lie from Hillary.

Update on the Clinton FBI Stuff

The New York Times is reporting that the source of the new emails is Anthony Weiner.  The FBI is investigating him for sexting with a 15 year old.  According to the Times, the FBI found "thousands" of emails on his devices which he shared with his wife Huma Abedin, one of Hillary Clinton's two closest aides.

If there are thousands of emails in this latest batch, it will take more than two weeks to bring the investigation to a close.  We won't get any clear resolution until after the election.  That means that for the first time in history, America will have a major party presidential candidate who is under active investigation by the FBI on election day.

Meanwhile, John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chairman has called on the FBI to release all the information that it has on this latest episode.  It won't happen, however, as Podesta clearly knows.  The FBI cannot release private emails from an investigation and it won't release progress reports on an ongoing investigation.  Podesta's call for openness here is just a ploy.

For more than a year, this election has been bizarre.  Every time it seems to be moving into a more conventional mode, something else happens.  Most likely, it will just keep getting worse.  It won't surprise me if tomorrow the Clinton campaign charges that Russian hackers put all these emails on the Weiner devices just to hurt Hillary.

 

The Investigation of Hillary Clinton has been REOPENED By The FBI

WOW!

The FBI reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton and her email server.  New emails were uncovered that may change the results of the investigation.

WOW!

Hillary is Using Joe Biden Now

Maybe the Clinton campaign is starting to worry.  Today, Politico has a story about how Hillary Clinton is planning to offer the position of secretary of state to Joe Biden.  It's a rather amazing article.

First of all, Politico is one place where Democrats go to get articles published that they need to see in the media.  The Wikileaks emails show that Politico offered the Clinton campaign pre-approval of articles and quotes.  It functioned more like the house organ of the campaign than an actual news site.

Second, the article in Politico says that Hillary has not told Biden of her desire to have him at the head of the state department.  I laughed for five minutes after reading that.  Imagine, Hillary hasn't spoken to Joe, but instead leaked the news to Politico.  Sure.  There's no way that is true.

What this seems to be is a move to try to help cover over Hillary's failing record in foreign relations.  She's going to try to use Joe Biden to provide the needed expertise.  But it's Joe Biden.  He's the guy who has teeth marks on his feet from putting them into his mouth so often. 

One More Polling Note

One poll that gets little notice from the media is from Rasmussen.  Today's tracking poll shows the race between Trump and Clinton tied at 45% each.

Does that mean anything?  Only that the race is close as seen by Rasmussen.  Two other items from the survey though are of interest.

First, among voters who have made up their minds and say that will not change, Trump leads Clinton by two percent.

Second, among voters who are not really certain of their choices, Clinton is way ahead. Clinton has  49% in this group to Trump’s 30%, Johnson’s six percent (6%) and Stein’s 16%.  That's a bad sign for Hillary.  It means that there is a much bigger basis for a shift to Trump rather than a shift to Hillary.  Of course, the 16% who favor Stein right now would be way more likely to vote for Hillary than Trump, so this evens things out a bit.

The bottom line is that it's close according to Rasmussen.

The Death of Polling

A few days ago, I wrote about the clearly biased nature of the ABC News tracking poll that was getting major coverage in all the mainstream media.  Clinton was up by 12% according to the experts who did the poll for ABC News.  That was the headline everywhere.  It did not matter that other polls were showing the race getting tighter; it was over and Clinton had won.  Now, a few days later, that same ABC tracking poll shows Clinton ahead by 4%.  That doesn't matter.  There's now an AP poll that shows Clinton ahead by 14%.  That's the story that many of the mainstream media is running.  Of course, while the ABC poll was rigged by using a sample with 9% more Democrats than Republicans, the AP poll actually uses 12% more Dems than GOP voters.  It's super-rigged.

It's a funny but rather sinister thing.  Anyone who looked at the ABC poll four days ago knew that it was rigged.  It polled a group that had way too many Democrats to accurately reflect America.  The polling "experts" working for ABC had 9% more Democrats than Republicans in the poll.  These experts well knew that we haven't had an electorate show up at the polls in many decades that had such a big lead for Democrats.  They still skewed the results by using those figures.  They fixed the poll.  Since then, they have been daily correcting the mix.  Now after four days of "corrections", we have a 4 point race.  ABC had its pollsters take the pro-Clinton shot.  They put out a poll that said Clinton had it wrapped up and the media trumpeted it around the nation.  One has to wonder how many potential Trump voters decided not to bother to go to the early voting places because they thought Trump had already lost.  And that's the point.

ABC and its so called experts didn't want to come to election day with the wrong results, however.  That's why the poll moved so quickly towards Trump.  It's also why, however, the other media no longer tell us non-stop about the ABC poll.  They use the AP poll instead.  AP will no doubt close quickly in a short time.

So much of the news coverage of the election focuses on polls rather than issues that the quality of our elections are hurt.  Nevertheless, that's the way it is.  If the media is rigging the polls to help Hillary, however, then we have a scandal of extreme importance.  It means that much of the coverage is rigged and the mainstream media knows that.

For those of you who are wondering if this is all an honest mistake, consider this:  any pollster will tell you that the key to the results is getting the proper mix of people in your sample.  The ABC pollsters know that.  The AP pollsters know that.  These two bogus polls are not mistakes.  They are intentional lies used by the media to help Hillary.

A Simple Medical Question

Anyone who has gone to the doctor or the hospital in recent years is  familiar with so called privacy rules that you are given.  Each doctor's office has you sign a document in which you acknowledge that you were told about those privacy rules and given a copy of them.  Each hospital requires you to sign similar documents prior to your admission to the hospital.

Here's a simple question?  Have you ever read those privacy rules?  Have you ever sat down in the waiting room and spent ten minutes reading the small print that tells you what the doctor will do with your information?  Do you know anyone who has actually read those rules?  Indeed, do you know anyone who reads the privacy rules at each doctor or hospital and determines whether or not those rules are fair and proper?

I think it is safe to say that greater than ninety nine percent of all patients pay no attention whatsoever to the privacy rules.  Nevertheless, federal law requires that the doctors and hospitals get these useless forms signed. 

But it even gets worse.  If you go to the pharmacy and ask a question about your prescriptions, the people behind the counter will often tell you that they cannot discuss the matter.  It might compromise your privacy, you see.  If I ask a question about a particular prescription, they cannot tell me the answer because someone behind me in line might hear what they say.  That may sound unbelievable, but it has happened to me more than once.

So here's one more question:  what do you think it cost the USA each year to require all these meaningless privacy forms and rules in our medical system?  The answer is a great many billions of dollars.  Even the government estimates that the cost of compliance is about a quarter of a billion dollars per year.  The government, however, leaves out the cost of the time lost for compliance.

Just imagine if the rules were changed so that each organization had to have privacy rules that would be furnished to a patient on demand.  Most likely, that would save 99 percent of all costs.

The next time someone tells you how we need experts in Washington to run our healthcare system, ask them about HIPAA and the privacy rules and about which expert dreamed this thing up.

 

They Made It Worse -- Defense Department Puts Off Trying to Get Re-enlistment Bonuses Back Until After The Election

Ten years ago, the California National Guard was short on meeting its enlistment figures.  This was in the midst of the Iraq War, and the California guard was being called on to send forces to that conflict on a regular basis.  As a result, the guard began a program, with the full approval of the Pentagon, to pay bonuses of up to 15 thousand dollars to soldiers who would enlist or re-enlist in the guard.  Many thousand men and women took the cash and signed on for more service with the guard.  Nearly all of those soldiers served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  They put themselves at risk for the USA and many were wounded.  Some even were killed in action.  Of course, that was ten years ago.

Flash forward a decade.  In 2014, the Pentagon decided that the bonuses were not paid in all cases in accordance with regulations.  In other words, the bureaucrats at the California guard offices made mistakes and paid some soldiers who were not technically entitled  to get the cash.  It is very important to keep in mind, however, that this was a mistake by the bureaucrats, not the soldiers.  The soldiers who were paid the money had it offered to them as a re-enlistment bonus.  These soldiers had no reason to question whether or not the bureaucrats had gotten it right.  They had no reason to question whether or not the cash they were being paid was properly authorized.  Thoese soldiers just got the money and used it for their needs and the needs of their families.  That did not matter to the Pentagon, however,  The morons at the Pentagon just contacted the soldiers and told them to give back the cash and to pay interest on it as well.  Families that were living paycheck to paycheck were suddenly told they had to cough up twenty or thirty thousand dollars.  Anyone who did not pay the cash back was subject to having their assets seized by the feds or their paychecks garnished.  It was a nightmare for these soldiers and their families who had done nothing wrong.  THEY HAD DONE NOTHING WRONG!!!!

For two years, this mess continued.  The soldiers wrote to the White House, but got no help.  They wrote to their senators, but were told that no help could be forthcoming.  These soldiers and their families who had done so much for America were given the finger by official Washington and president Obama.

Then something changed.  Some of the media got word of the story.  It was featured prominently on Fox News.  And the story came out in the middle of an election.  Suddenly, Washington cared.

Today, secretary of defense, Ash Carter, tried to get beyond the damage being done by this story.  He could have wiped away the efforts to take this cash back from the poor soldiers and their families.  He didn't.  Instead, Carter did the single most political thing that could be chosen.  He stopped efforts to take back the cash until January of 2017.  Carter did not let anyone off the hook for repayment.  He just made sure that the story would be postponed until after the election.  Obama and the Democrats screw over thousands of blameless soldiers and their families and when the story breaks, the response is to try to put off the problem until after the election.

IT'S A DISGRACE!!!!!!!

The Wikileaks Story Breaks Through

For the last two weeks, the mainstream media has barely covered the daily email dumps by Wikileaks.  We got weeks of coverage of a decade old tape of Trump and the aftermath of that.  When Wikileaks started publishing the email of Hillary's campaign manager John Podesta, however, most stories were about how the Russians were involved.  In other words, the media followed the Clinton Campaign line that the content of the email was not the story, but rather the possibility of Russian involvement in getting that email was what counted.  Today, for the first time, that has seemed to shift.  The New York Times top headline is about the content of the Wikileaks emails.  CBS News led its morning report with a story on the content.  Other media is following suits.  The reason is that the content of the emails has now gotten to the point where even the media cannot ignore it.

We learned today that the fund raisers for the Clinton Foundation not only sought money for charity, but they also sought big bucks for Bill and Hillary Clinton.  According to internal email, Bill Clinton was paid salaries or other payments PERSONALLY of over sixty million bucks that came from Clinton Foundation contributors.  This was disclosed by Doug Band, a long time Clinton insider, who complained when he was called on the carpet for soliciting business at a foundation function.  He pointed out that his conflict of interest was nothing compared to that of the Clintons themselves who got over sixty million dollars personally from those who gave to the foundation.

When you add this to the emails from prior days that showed that the State Department under Hillary gave clear preference to those who contributed to the Foundation, you have a story of total corruption.  After all, those getting preferences from the Clinton State Department not only gave to a supposed charity, they also steered sixty million bucks to the Clintons themselves. 

That's corruption on a scale never seen before in the USA at this high a level of government.

No wonder the media feels compelled to cover the story.

The Insanity of the Media

I usually think that much of the mainstream media is biased, but it's important to note that many times the real issue is ignorance or even insanity when it comes to the media.  I saw an example of this in a Reuters article today.  The Reuters report was about the relations between the Palestinians and the other Arabs in the region.  Saudi Arabia has stopped funding the Palestinian Authority according to Reuters, and other Middle East Arab countries have had increasingly poor relations with the PA.  Then comes the clinker.  Reuters reports that the reason for the worsening of relations is that the other Arab countries are concerned that Palestinian democracy may be threatened.

Think about that.  The Palestinian Authority is led by president Abbas who was elected to a four year term over ten years ago.  He has prevented any further elections and just usurped power since then.  In Gaza, the forces of Hamas took control and won a short armed battle with the members of Abbas' Fatah party.  Many were killed.  Gaza is now totally under the dictatorship of Hamas.  So we have the big area of the West Bank under one man rule by Abbas and the smaller area of Gaza under dictatorship by Hamas.  There is no such thing any more as Palestinian democracy.

So how can Reuters report that concern about Palestinian democracy is what is motivating the other Arab countries?  It's really insane.  Nothing could support such a report aside from an inability to recognize reality.  That's true insanity.

Polar Ice and the Polar Vortex

Scientific American has an article about the polar vortex that merits discussion.  The vortex is the strong band of wind that surrounds the North Pole.  According to SA, the wind has been moving in recent years away from North America and more towards Europe and Asia.  This in turn allows cold air from the arctic to move southward into North America and cause colder winters while the winters in the Europe and Asia as warmer.  SA also tells us that the change in the polar vortex is caused by climate change (what a surprise.)  Here's how SA puts it:

The movement of the vortex has come as the Arctic steadily loses sea ice, a process that some scientists are worried could accelerate in the future as the Earth continues to warm at record levels.

There is, however, a basic problem with that analysis.  The ice cap at the North Pole is not shrinking.  There's a site that measures and reports monthly on ice at the poles.  The recent low point for ice in the arctic came in 2012; since then we have seen more ice.  If you go back five years earlier to 2007, the ice levels were almost exactly the same as they are at present.  If we are really experiencing the predicted warming and the loss of the polar ice cap, we should not be seeing increases in ice over the last five years.  Nor should we have the same amount of ice as we had a decade ago.

The polar vortex may be moving.  That movement may be causing changes to the winters in different areas around the globe.  But there's no way to blame these changes on global warming and the supposed loss of polar ice.

By the way, for what it is worth, the ice levels at the South Pole have been increasing at a rather rapid rate.  So much water is going into ice at the South Pole, that sea levels should be falling.

Hillary, Syria and World War 3

This morning, Donald Trump said that Hillary Clinton's policy in Syria could lead to World War 3.  This is a very important point and it needs to be explained.  Trump said that were Hillary to establish no fly zones as she is promoting for northern Syria, there could be confrontations with Russia that could lead to war.  Trump said that our focus has to be on defeating ISIS in Syria rather than on overthrowing Assad.

If there were ever a point on which American voters could look at the judgment of the candidates, this is a good one to use.  Here are the important facts:

1.  The single most important fact is that president Obama and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state did nothing as Syria melted down into a brutal civil war and the Russians moved in substantial forces to support Assad.  We will discuss this further below.

2.  Assad is a brutal dictator who started the civil war by slaughtering peaceful protesters in Damascus.  He killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and drove millions from their homes.  He used chemical weapons on his own people.  Right now, he is starving to death a quarter of a million people in Aleppo.  The man is a monster.

3.  It may seem hard to believe, but ISIS is worse than Assad.  ISIS, unlike Assad, is active all over the world.  ISIS, unlike Assad, has been attacking America and Europe.  ISIS uses slavery without limitation.  ISIS wants to take control of the entire region and spread death across the world.

4.  Over the last few years, Russia has become a key ally of Assad.  Throughout the civil war, Russia had a naval base on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, but it was little involved.  Then a few years ago, Russia started shipping weapons to Assad covertly.  Even though Obama had announced that American policy was that Assad must go, the USA said and did nothing to stop the flow of Russian arms.  About six months ago, Russia announced that it would start bombing terrorists in Syria.  Russian planes did attack, but the targets were not ISIS but rather the rebels fighting Assad who had no connection to ISIS.  Obama said and did nothing to stop those attacks.  Russia then went further; it brought a major anti-aircraft system into the region.  Clearly, the anti-aircraft missiles were not aimed at ISIS or the rebels; they have no aircraft.  The missiles were designed to limit American and coalition forces, the only other group with aircraft.  Obama did nothing in response.  Russian planes have been very active helping Assad in Aleppo and they have observed no limits on bombing.  Civilians have been targeted.  In the worst instance, the Russians bombed and destroyed an aid convoy sent by the Red Cross to help the starving in Aleppo.  Not only did the Russians destroy the convoy and all the aid, but they killed the Red Cross workers who were driving the trucks.  Obama did nothing in response.

5.  The Russians are now entrenched in Syria and have made clear to the world that they are staying to help Assad.

With these facts, Hillary Clinton is still pushing to establish a no fly zone in the north of Syria where people can go for protection.  It is a policy that Trump also supported at the start of the primary campaign, long before the Russians had moved strongly into Syria.  The problem with a no fly zone, however, is that one has to enforce it.  What happens when a Russian plane flies into that no fly zone?  Will we shoot it down?  When the non-ISIS rebels bring forces into the no fly zone and the Russians send planes to attack, will we risk war with Russia to shoot down those planes?  It is a very dangerous situation.

At the last debate, Hillary Clinton was asked if she would shoot down Russian planes in her no fly zone.  Like her response to many questions at that debate, Hillary spoke and spoke about the issue but never answered the question.  All she said is that the USA would engage in diplomacy with the Russians. 

Let's carry Hillary's response through to its logical conclusion.  Russia has staked out a strong position in Syria.  It has already said that it would not accept a no fly zone in that country.  If Putin does not back down when Hillary's no fly zone is declared, that will leave America and Hillary with a rather bleak choice.  Will we let the Russians ignore the no fly zone that we declared and keep on bombing civilians in the region, or will we shoot down the Russian planes that enter the zone?  If we let the Russians keep on bombing, the USA will be humiliated and the world will know that Hillary Clinton does not mean what she says.  It will be a disaster for our country.  On the other hand, if we shoot down Russian planes, we will likely see a counter move by Putin that could quickly escalate into a full scale war between the USA and Russia.  That is a truly terrible choice.

The truth is that a no fly zone made a great deal of sense in 2015 and even the start of 2016.  Of course, Obama never took that step and instead let Putin and the Russians establish a major presence in Syria, a presence that Obama could have easily stopped.  The Russian presence changed the facts on the ground.  It made the establishment of a no fly zone into a very risky proposition.

One last note for those who are now talking about what a monster Assad is and how he must go.  Remember Saddam Hussein?  He too was a monster who had to go.  The USA went to war in Iraq.  Once it was clear that Iraq had no nuclear program or other active program for weapons of mass destruction, however, people like Hillary Clinton decided that the war had been a mistake.  So what if Saddam Hussein was a monster?  It didn't make war a good choice for the USA.  Has that reasoning changed?  Is Hillary so much of a hawk that she now wants to fight Russia in order to get rid of Assad?

Hillary's judgment is to follow a course that most likely leads either to war with Russia or humiliation of the USA.  Trump's judgment is to avoid a confrontation with Russia.  The voters need to decide whose judgment is better.

Realize What The UNESCO Vote Actually Means

UNESCO has now voted to pass a Palestinian sponsored resolution that does not recognize the history of the Holy Land as a Jewish homeland.  The resolution talks about the Noble Sanctuary which is the area where the al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock Mosque are built and recognizes it only as a holy site for Islam.  The fact that the site is on the location where the Jewish Temples were built is ignored.  Indeed, all connections to Jews and Judaism for the site are ignored by UNESCO.  UNESCO wants to erase thousands of years of history.

It's important to realize what the vote actually means, however.  Remember, if the Jewish Temple never existed even 2000 years ago, then the story that Jesus overturned the tables of the money lenders in the courtyard of that Temple must be phony.  If there is no strong Jewish connection to Jerusalem, then the entire New Testament must be phony.  After all, if there were no Jews in the area, then Jesus must not have been there either.  UNESCO did not just vote to favor the Moslem claim to the Temple Mount; it voted to erase both Jewish and Christian history.

We cannot stand by and watch the UN sink to the point where it is trying to rewrite ancient history for modern political purposes.  The USA should stop any further contributions to the UN until this vote is rescinded.

The Runaway Predicted By the Mainstream Media

Have you been reading the mainstream media's coverage of the election?  If so, you know by now that Hillary Clinton is running away with the race.  It's going to be a landslide.  At least that is what the mainstream media wants you to believe.  But it's not true.  It's not even close to being true.

Here are the leads for the last week in the average of recent polls put together by Real Clear Politics.  They are in order starting with the oldest.

7.1 (one week ago)
6.2
6.0
5.8
5.3
5.6
5.0 (today)

If you add in the fact that there is a clearly bogus poll included in the mix (the ABC tracking poll that shows Hillary up by 12%) then the figures are even closer.  Without the phony ABC poll, the average of all the other recent polls shows Hillary up by 3.9%.

It's worth keeping in mind these figures.  It's also worth remembering that there are four national polls issued today that show the race either tied or with a 1% lead for one candidate or the other. 

I had to write this post because I just read the third article from a liberal media reporter today in which I saw a discussion about the "collapse" of the Trump campaign and how that will possibly bring in a Democrat majority into the House.  It still amazes me that these people write such silly articles.  I can't decide how many of these mainstream media reporters are just morons who don't understand what they are writing and how many are propagandists who are intentionally writing lies.  Either way, it doesn't say much for American media.
 

Obamacare -- Hillary's View

With the White House confirming the impending failure of Obamacare due to soaring premiums for insurance and millions of people left unable to afford healthcare, Hillary Clinton issued a statement today about the so called Affordable Care Act.  (Properly, it ought to be called the Unaffordable Lack of Care Act.)  Here's the essence of what Hillary had to say about Obamacare and the 20% rise in average premiums for Americans:

Donald Trump wants to "reverse the progress we have made and start this fight all over."  Hillary wants to keep Obamacare but expand it to make it better.

It's an amazing example of just how bad Hillary Clinton really is when it comes to leadership.  If something is not working, Hillary's solution is to do more of it.  If you are eating to much and gaining weight, don't worry.  Hillary would tell you to just eat more.  If you have been threatened with the loss of your job for coming to work late, don't worry.  Hillary would tell you to come in late more often.  If your car's brakes keep making noises because your brake pads have worn down too far, don't worry.  Hillary would tell you not to change the brake pads; just try to step on the brakes more often.

There's a lot of times when a candidate gets called names as part of a campaign.  It's unfortunate and unnecessary.  For Hillary Clinton, however, there is no choice.  She truly has no idea of the consequences of what she wants to do.  This is a woman who would destroy what is left of America were she to become president.

Obamacare Premiums Go Through The Roof........Silence Results

The White House confirmed yesterday that the average premium for health insurance sold on the exchanges for the middle level Obamacare policy will go up by more than 20% in 2017.  This increase comes on top of the annual big increases we have already seen under Obamacare.  President Obama promised Americans that each family would save $2500 per year once his plan was adopted.  The reality is that most American families are paying many thousands MORE for coverage that is nowhere near as good as it was prior to Obamacare.  And remember, that additional cost and reduced coverage doesn't count the hundreds of billions of dollars that Obamacare costs the federal government.  When you add that in, the cost is at least another $2000 per family per year, and it is rising.

Let's look at an example.  Prior to Obamacare going into effect, I used to pay about $450 per month for health insurance.  I was part of a group plan run by the bar association.  Obamacare, however, outlawed participation in that group and forced me to buy coverage on the exchange.  In the first year, my new plan had essentially the same coverage, but it cost $800 per month.  The next year, the coverage was reduced in dramatic fashion; I used to only need to pay a copay to see a specialist, but under the new plan all such visits were not covered until I hit the $6500 annual deductible.  For this big reduction in coverage, I had to pay $960 per month.  Then came the next year.  The same policy went up to about $1100 per month.  Now the carrier who sold that policy has stopped selling insurance on the exchange in Connecticut.  The comparable plan is going to be substantially higher; I do not yet know the exact amount it would be, but at a 20% increase the monthly cost would be $1320.  That comes to just under $16 thousand per year for one person.

There are not many Americans who can afford to pay premiums like these.  Some people get subsidies, but there are millions who do not.  On top of this, as the costs rise on the exchanges, they also rise in business plans.  Employees who pay a percentage of their health insurance are getting hit with big increases as well.

The best way to describe Obamacare is that is has been a total disaster.

The worst of all this is that Obamacare is a disaster that everyone knew or should have known was coming.  None of the price increases we are now seeing were unexpected.  This disaster was predicted when the passage of Obamacare was being debated.  It was a planned part of the law.  The goal of Obama and his administration was to damage the health insurance industry to the point that the companies withdrew and left no other option than a single payer government system.  That is still where they want to go.

The problem with single payer systems like the one in Canada or the UK is that people are often left to wait to get treatment.  If you need a knee replacement in the USA, you can schedule the surgery in a week or so.  If you need a knee replacement in Canada, it could take nine months to a year before the surgery takes place.  If an elderly person in the USA needs some sort of expensive treatment, they get it.  In Canada, many of the elderly are told to just take a pill for the pain and then left to fend for themselves.  In the UK, the government system is so poor that most people who require advanced treatment go outside that system to totally private clinics that are not covered by insurance.  That may work well for the wealthy, but for the middle class it is an impossibility.

America has to decide if we want to continue down the road to a healthcare system that provides equal but POOR healthcare to everyone or if we want to continue to support advances in healthcare and improvements for most while dealing with the flaws that arise from a market system.

Obamacare supporters tell us over and over about how many more people now have health insurance.  But think about that claim.  The overwhelming bulk of the new people with insurance are the very poor who were added to Medicaid.  Those people did not need any of the rest of the Obamacare system to be put in place to get their care.  If we had just upped the Medicaid coverage levels, we could have saved hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions of dollars.  There are essentially no increases in those with health insurance outside of Medicaid.  Even worse, a great many people who have insurance have gotten hit with huge deductibles.  These people have insurance but they don't have health care because they cannot afford to pay for the deductibles.

So why is the so little coverage of the disaster that Obamacare has become?  Surely, everyone can see this.  Why does the media treat this as some sort of accident which will pass?  The reality is that the media does not want to see Obamacare repealed because it would hurt their political party of choice, the Democrats.  The health of America is too important, however, to be stuck in a political battle.  It's time that everyone recognized this reality.  Obamacare has to go.  NOW!

An Update On Polling

I wrote yesterday about the distortions in polls that come from the pollster deciding what the turnout will be on election day and how it will be split between GOP, Democrat and independent voters.  The main outlier on this basis is the ABC News tracking poll which shows Clinton up by 12% among likely voters.  ABC assumes that we will see an electorate that will be more slanted towards Democrats than in any recent election ... and by a lot.  One has to wonder if ABC and its pollster decided that they would put out a poll that overstates support for Hillary in order to discourage the Trump supporters from voting for a "lost cause". 

Let me put this into proper context.  The Real Clear Politics average of all recent polls is made up of ten national polls take in the last week.  Hillary is leading in that average by 5 percent.  If you remove the ABC tracking poll from the average, however, the other nine polls taken together show Hillary with a lead of 3.9%.  About a week ago, Hillary's lead was just under 8%, so even with the ABC tracking poll there is a clear trend towards Trump. 

There is a big difference in a lead of 5% and one of only 3.9%.  It is a particularly important difference if the pollster is trying to depress the turnout among GOP voters.  The truth is that as of today, the race is still quite close and getting closer.

Polls And Reality

In the last two days, we have seen polls that say that Donald Trump is winning by 2% and polls that say that Hillary Clinton is winning by 12% as well as all sorts of numbers in between.  The media has focused on the ABC poll that put Hillary up by 12% and basically ignored the IBD poll that put Trump up by 2%.  That is not surprising since nearly all of the media supports the Democrat.  But none of this really tells us where the race stands at the moment.

To try to make some sense of this, I looked at the internals of three polls:  the ABC tracking poll, the IBD poll and the CNN poll that was released this afternoon which shows Hillary up by 5%.   The most surprising finding of that review is that the results of the polls are nearly totally explained by the mix of the people polled.  ABC polled 36% Democrats and only 27% Republicans.  CNN polled 31% Democrats and 26% Republicans.  (The remainder were independents.)  If you adjust the ABC poll so that the percentages of Republicans, Democrats and independents are the same as that used by CNN, the outcome puts the results within 1% of the CNN poll results.  If you adjust the IBD poll percentages of those polled to the ones used by CNN, the results again come within 1% of the actual CNN results.  In other words, these three pollsters are all getting relatively the same answers from Democrats, Republicans and Independents regarding the election.  The variation in the results -- which are quite substantial -- stem from the mix of voters used.

It is important to remember that pollsters usually adjust their results to fit the profile of the expected electorate.  That being said, it is also worth pointing out that we have not seen an electorate with components like the one ABC used at any time in the last 20 years.  The ABC poll is clearly out of synch with reality.  The real question is which of CNN and IBD have the correct mix being used.  There's no way ahead of time to tell; we may see a surge of Republican Trump voters like in the primaries and a fall off among Democrats who really don't like Hillary all that much.  Such turnout figures would bode quite well for the GOP.  Alternatively, we could see GOP turnout sag as some Republicans just don't want to vote for Trump.  Only time will tell.  The best thing that one can say is this:  according to Nate Silver of 538 blog who is supposed to be a polling expert, the IBD poll has been the most accurate in predicting the results for the last three presidential elections.  That is a great track record.  If IBD is right again this year with its turnout model, then the election is now essentially tied.  If the actual percentage turnout is more like the CNN model, then Hillary is ahead by 4 or 5 percent.  It is not the landslide that the mainstream media keeps discussing unless the turnout changes to something completely different than anything we've seen in recent American elections.

Is This Just A Coincidence? No Way!

Money is very important in politics; no one would deny that.  Still, the amounts that get spent for high federal offices are vastly larger than for other races.  The presidential election costs billions.  Senate races sometimes cost tens of millions of dollars.  Races for the House of Representatives usually cost less than a million dollars, but rarely go above that number.  In state campaigns, the dollars spent are often much less.  Money does get spent in governors' races.  Once you get down to state legislatures, however, it is almost unheard of to see big bucks spent.  This is why the following story is extraordinary.

In 2015, Virginia governor Terry MacAuliffe and his campaign gave one Democrat candidate for the state senate just under half a million dollars.  MacAuliffe then had the Virginia state Democrat party give that same candidate for state senate another quarter of a million bucks.  All together, the Democrat candidate Jill McCabe got roughly $700,000 from MacAuliffe and his allies in the party.  This, of course, is over and above whatever amounts McCabe was able to raise on her own through direct contrbutions.

What makes this contribution extraordinary are two facts:  1) Terry MacAuliffe is a long time and close confidant of the Clintons; and 2) Jill McCabe is the wife of the assistant director of the FBI who was in charge of the investigation by the FBI of Hillary Clinton and her emails.  Throw in the additional information that the story of the Hillary Clinton private, unsecured email system broke in early March of 2015 and it was one week later when MacAuliffe met with the McCabe campaign to discuss helping her with cash and you get the full picture.

We are supposed to believe that Jill McCabe got extraordinary amounts of campaign cash from a member of the Clinton inner circle just one week after the Hillary email story broke and this was all just a coincidence.  You know, a coincidence like when Bill Clinton secretly went on the jet holding the Attorney General just before a final decision was made on the investigation into Hillary's emails.  There is no way this is a coincidence. 

The corruption demonstrated here is extraordinary.

What Next?

James O'Keefe of Project Veritas says that there will be another video coming out that will show direct involvement by Hillary Clinton in creating violence at Trump rallies.  It's a hard claim to believe.  I don't doubt the earlier videos that showed Democrat operatives claiming that the violence at Trump rallies was their creation.  The Democrat response has been to call O'Keefe a criminal.  They have no answer to what they did, so they now attack the messenger.  Nevertheless, it would be bizarre if Hillary herself was involved.  She, like her husband, has always been able to keep distance between the dirty tricks and corruption and herself.  Most likely, the video will be of some Democrat operative stating that Hillary was involved or was briefed on the criminal activities of her campaign.

Let's Consider The Substance of Russia's Actions

There was a lot of talk at the presidential debate the other night about Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.  Hillary Clinton raced to denounce Russia for supposedly hacking the Democrat National Committee and her campaign manager John Podesta.  Of course, she ignored the content of the material obtained by the hackers and the corrupt and disreputable actions by the Clinton campaign and the DNC that were exposed.  Instead, Hillary said that Putin wanted to put Trump in office to be "Russia's puppet".  Much has been said about what has been revealed in the hacked emails even though the mainstream media for the most part has ignored the subject.  One thing that has been almost completely overlooked, however, is the substance of what Russia itself has done in recent years.  Let's consider that substance for a few moments:

1.  During the Bush years in the White House, Russia was not very aggressive and US - Russian relations were pretty good.  That changed during the 2008 presidential campaign.  At that point, Putin took advantage of the American focus on the election and had Russian forces invade the small neighboring country of Georgia.  The response by Bush and his foreign policy team was to get the world to impose sanctions on Russia for this aggressive act.  The sanctions hurt the Russian economy during the fall of 2008, but the Russians remained in place in two provinces of Georgia.

2.  In 2009, president Obama took office and appointed Hillary Clinton secretary of state to run US foreign policy.  One of the first moves by Hillary was to convince Obama to "reset" relations with Russia.  That reset amounted to four things:  a) the USA lifted all sanctions on Russia, b) the Russian takeover of the two provinces of Georgia was allowed to remain in place (and it is still there today), and c) the USA agreed not to put anti-missile systems into Poland and the Czech Republic which the Russians saw as a threat to them, and d) Hillary had a photo-op with the Russian foreign minister and gave him a red button.  Hillary's first action towards Russia was appeasement.  The aggressive war by Russia against its neighbor Georgia would be forgiven and things would go back to normal.  The one-sided nature of this deal was not lost on Moscow.

3.  In 2010, the USA and Russia completed negotiations of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (also called START).  START replaced an expiring agreement between these two countries to limit the numbers of nuclear weapons.  Hillary Clinton has proudly claimed this as her own achievement during the presidential debates and elsewhere.  START focuses on the number of nuclear weapons launch systems allowed to each side.  The START agreement limits each country to roughly 1500 ICBMs, submarine launch systems and long range nuclear bombers.  Prior to signing the agreement, the USA had about 1800 such launch systems while Russia had about 1425.  In other words, Hillary's big achievement with START was to let the Russians increase their nuclear forces while the USA had to cut ours by about 15%.  The one-sided nature of that deal was not lost on Moscow.

4.  In 2011, a civil war began in Syria when the president of that country, Bashir al Assad sent snipers to open fire randomly at people who were peacefully protesting in Damascus and elsewhere.  The protesters did not back down and Assad escalated his attacks on the opposition into all out war.  Both Russia and Iran supported Assad's moves.  The USA did nothing as tens of thousands of Syrian civilians were slaughtered by the Assad forces.  A few months earlier, Hillary Clinton had convinced Obama to send US forces to bomb Libyan government troops who were preparing to crush the political opposition in Benghazi.  The USA said that the move was designed to prevent the slaughter of the people in that city.  Estimates were that as many as 1000 people might have been killed had the USA not acted.  The American response to massive slaughter in Syria or more precisely the lack of any American response to the Syrian mass murder was shocking after the USA's having just acted to stop a much, much smaller onslaught in Libya.  It appeared that Obama and Clinton had lost the stomach for any further involvement.  The weak US response in Syria was not lost on Moscow.

5.  In 2012, president Obama was famously overhear on a "hot mike" telling the Russians that he would be able to be more flexible once he had been re-elected.  After a first term during which Obama and Clinton gave the Russians everything that they wanted, Obama was promising more.  This too was not lost on Moscow.

6.  While Hillary was still in office, Obama announced a new US policy towards Syria.  Basically, America would do nothing unless the Syrians started using chemical weapons.  That was a "red line" for the USA.  It was strange that in the face of over 100,000 dead Syrians at the hands of the Assad forces by that point, Obama was talking about the then non-existent use of chemical weapons.  It was an amazingly weak policy, and it was not lost on Moscow.

7.  During both Bush's and Obama's time in office, the US tried to get sanctions imposed on Iran for its program to develop nuclear weapons.  The result was a rather strong set of sanctions that had a terrible effect on the Iranian economy.  Russia cooperated with that sanctions regime.

8.  About four years ago, the USA started meeting with the Iranians to discuss the Iranian nuclear program.  These talks expanded into ones in which five countries including both Russia and the USA met with Iran to try to reach agreement.  The negotiations were another major show of weakness by the USA.  Nothing the Iranians did or demanded led to any strong response by the USA.  The announced goal of the negotiations was a deal that would prevent Iran from even getting nukes.  President Obama announced that the USA would never agree to any outcome under which Iran could continue to use its centrifuges to produce weaponized nuclear material.  All missile development by Iran would also have to be stopped according to Obama.  In the negotiations, the USA gave up on all these points.  The final agreement actually provides that the sanctions are immediately lifted and Iran gets a path to having a nuclear weapon in at most ten years.  Because the inspection regime in the agreement is highly deficient, Iran may be able to cheat and build nuclear weapons much sooner.  After all, that is what the North Koreans did after making a deal with Bill Clinton not to produce nukes.  The Russians watched first hand as the weakness of the US negotiators was put on display in Geneva.  Moscow also watched as Obama accepted that all of his stated goals would be abandoned and all of Iran's goals were accepted.

9.  Once the Iran deal was put in place, Russia understood that the world had really changed.  America was no longer a country to be feared; it was led by a government that was both stupid and weak.  Russia immediately moved into a close relationship with Iran once the deal was signed.  The Russians sold the Iranians billions of dollars in weapons systems which were paid for with the cash that the USA returned to Iran.  Russian troops began arriving in Syria and they cooperated with Iranian troops already there who were supporting the Assad regime.  Russian planes began bombing in Syria.  Russia said it was bombing terrorists, but less than 5% of Russian strikes hit ISIS.  The bulk of the Russian strikes hit the Sunni rebels who oppose both ISIS and Assad.  Russia then also installed and anti aircraft system in Syria.  Remember, the rebels and ISIS do not have planes.  The anti-aircraft system was designed to shoot down American planes.  As all this happened, Obama did nothing.

10.  Supposedly, the Russians also hacked into the DNC and the email of John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager.  According to Clinton's latest lie, 17 different US intelligence agencies have announced that the hack was performed by the Russians.  Really?  Is she kidding?  There have not been 17 intelligence agencies of the US government who looked into that question.  Since it affects the campaign, we finally got some sort of response from the Obama administration.  Vice president Biden was sent out to announce that the USA would retaliate against Russia for the hacking.  Biden actually then said that no one would know when it had happened.  You could actually hear the laughter coming from Moscow all the way here in Connecticut.

The truth is that the terrible relationship between the USA and Russia is a product that was created by Hillary Clinton and president Obama.  If the Russians indeed did hack the DNC, it is most likely something that Putin had done just to make clear to the world just how weak Obama and America really are.  Putin knows that with Clinton there will be no consequences.  In fact, most likely Putin has already let Clinton know that he holds some of the classified email from her private unsecured server and from the Clinton foundation which ought to be enough to see Hillary impeached and removed from office if she is elected.  The DNC and Podesta hacks are to make it clear to Hillary just how vulnerable she truly is to the Russians.

 

The Donald and the Women Story Actually Gets Funny

Yesterday brought a rather hilarious moment to the presidential campaign.  Muckraker attorney and Democrat operative Gloria Allred brought out a new woman who claimed that Donald Trump kissed her against her will and later offered her ten thousand dollars to have sex with him.  The new accuser is what makes this so funny; it's someone named Jessica Drake who is an actress in porn films.

Think about that.  The woman has sex for money on film, but we are supposed to believe that she was upset because some guy kissed her.  Really?  Then, even worse, he supposedly offered her more to have sex with him than she made having sex on film with multiple other men.  Oh, the horror!

Look, the fact that this woman has sex on film with multiple partners for money does not, by itself, mean that her story is false.  It does mean, however, that her professed outrage at the supposed kiss and offer is ridiculous.  Indeed, that supposed outrage severely undermines the likelihood that anything she says is true.  Further, the very fact that the Democrats are now down to trotting out a porn star to complain about Trump shows that the story is dying and Hillary and company are desperate to keep it alive.

 

AT&T and Time Warner -- Not Such A Good Idea

The big business news (and I do mean big business) today is the purchase by AT&T of Time Warner for nearly 100 billion dollars.  Is there anyone other than the investors in Time Warner who actually thinks that what the country needs now is MORE concentration in media?  I doubt it.  The proposed deal ought to be challenged by the federal government on anti-trust grounds.

About a century ago, America made the determination that too much concentration in a particular business was a bad thing.  Monopolies and oligopolies were outlawed.  Over the years, a many companies were broken up.  About forty years ago, AT&T itself was forced to split into eight different pieces.  The company that dominated the nations phone system was no longer a national monopoly.  When cell phones came along, there were multiple carriers and the competition meant that cell phone coverage was built faster and prices were less expensive.  Now the cell phone industry has four basic competitors with the two largest, Verizon and AT&T, both being mostly pieces of the old AT&T.  AT&T has also tried to move into other forms of content delivery; it spent nearly 40 billion dollars to buy a satellite TV provider.  It uses its market power in one area to help the other.  Right now, someone with an AT&T cellphone gets certain free services if they also get satellite TV from Direct TV, the AT&T company.  This is exactly the type of monopolization that our anti-trust laws were designed to prevent.

Time Warner is one of the very few media giants.  It owns HBO and some other pay TV services (like Cinemax); cable news channels like CNN, TNT and others; and movie and TV production studios like Warner Brothers, etc.  Time Warner content is shown on all sorts of TV and other providers.  Just imagine what AT&T could do in the cell phone industry by providing Time Warner content at a reduced rate on its phones.  That is just an example of the perils in the creation of such a media giant.

These concerns will quickly be disregarded by those who think that AT&T will agree to some sort of restrictions that make everything fair.  Sadly, it doesn't really work that way.  There will always be a way for the new company to get around most of the restrictions. 

The merger is bad news.

Proof of Duplicity and (sorry Comey) of Crime

We learned last night that there are over 1000 emails between Hillary Clinton and General David Petreus that Hillary never turned over to the State Department.  All of the emails are from Hillary's time as secretary of state.  Petreus was either the commanding general of CENTCOM in charge of American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan or the director of the CIA at the time.  We already knew from emails obtained from other sources that Hillary had told Petreus to communicate with her on her personal email system when she became secretary of state.

Think about that.  The military head of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan communicated with the secretary of state and Hillary either did not think these email were work-related or else she withheld them because they were so clearly classified that any moron would understand that she had violated the national security laws.  Remember, this was not one or five or even a dozen emails that somehow got sent on the wrong system.  This is over 1000 emails over a little more than three years.  That comes out to one email per day.  It wasn't a mistake.  It wasn't Hillary not understanding what was and what was not classified.  Almost by definition, communications between the secretary of state and the commanding general of our forces in two active wars is classified.  Think of the thousands of American troops whose lives were put at risk by Hillary's need to use her own set of rules rather than following the law.

If there ever was a disclosure that showed that Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president, this is it.

What Is It With Hillary Clinton and Classified Material - 2

Earlier today, I wrote about how Hillary Clinton disclosed extremely secret and classified national security information during the presidential debate the other night.  Now, we seeing new articles that talk of yet another instance in which Hillary mishandled classified information and put at risk the lives of US intelligence sources.  The even happened a few years back.  Hillary sent an email to John Podesta, her campaign manager.  In the email Hillary identified American intelligence sources in Libya BY NAME!!!!  When Podesta's email account was hacked, that info got into the hands of the hackers.  Hillary says the hackers were the Russian government, but we don't know for sure.  The hackers, however, published the email through Wikileaks, so the entire world now has access to the names of people in Libya who cooperate with US intelligence.  (I wonder how long our sources will survive.)

The names of US intelligence sources are ALWAYS classified.  Hillary knows that.  In fact, this is the sort of intelligence that is classified at the highest level of secrecy.  But there is Hillary typing away on her own non-government email account sending this highly classified info to Podesta who does not have the security clearance to even read the material.  Even worse, Podesta's email account is a clear target for hacking and it actually got hacked.

Hillary Clinton treated the lives of the Libyans who cooperated with the CIA as less important than casual conversation with her campaign manager.  This is a woman with very poor judgment.  Bernie Sanders was right in that regard.

What Is It With Hillary Clinton and Classified Material

At the third debate, Hillary Clinton let slip some of the most classified information of the USA.  She told the world that there's about a four minute time lag between the president ordering the launch of nuclear weapons and the actual launch of those doomsday devices.

Think about that for a moment.  Everyone already knew that America would get at most a twenty to thirty minute warning of a nuclear attack depending on the site from which the attack comes.  What very few people knew was how long the president had to decide to strike back and how long it would take to act on that decision once made.  Not anymore!  Hillary, who clearly knows this highly classified information, just told the world.

Now imagine that instead of Hillary having said that, it had been Donald Trump who made the statement.  Imagine the wholesale outrage and upset across all the media and from all the other Democrat operatives.  We would never hear the end of it.

When Hillary discloses classified information like this, however, there's hardly a ripple of comment.  I assume that by tomorrow, FBI Director Comey will announce that while Hillary's release of this highly classified information was extremely careless, he could see no intent here, so she won't be prosecuted.

The nuclear secret that Hillary disclosed is not quite the same as all the other classified information that Hillary put at risk on her private unsecured email server.  With the email system, there had to be an act by our enemies to get the classified information.  They had to hack into Hillary's system.  The nuclear launch window information was different.  That doesn't require any action by our enemies.  Hillary just told it to them at the debate.

If anyone really doubts that Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president, he or she need only consider Hillary's inability to keep her mouth shut when it comes to classified info.

The US Troops who Aren't In Iraq (They Are) And Who Aren't in Combat (They Are) Suffer Casualties

If you listen to president Obama or to Hillary Clinton, you would think that the USA has no ground troops in Iraq.  Of course, it is just another lie from the "dream team" of liars known as the Barack and Hillary Show.  For years, Obama has told us that America would never again have boots on the ground in Iraq.  Then suddenly we did.  Six times in the last two years, Obama has increased the number of American ground troops in Iraq; each time we were told why they were not really there.  They were just guards for the embassy was the first lie.  Then they were just there to train Iraqi troops, another lie.  Then they were just special operators who would assist with logistics; a third lie.  Then they became troops embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish forces but not in combat.  That too proved to be a lie.  The latest story from the White House is that US troops are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish troops but they are not on the front lines.  That too is a lie.  Yesterday, we heard that America suffered the death of another of its soldiers in the fighting around Mosul.

Did you see the story of the death of this brave soldier?  It's buried.  The mainstream media is too busy covering fluff to focus on the death of this soldier.

The attempt by the media to bury the story doesn't change the facts, however.  President Obama has lied and lied and lied about the US forces in Iraq.  And while we are at it, let's not forget that Hillary Clinton has joined in those lies.  How many times has she said that she is against having US ground forces in Iraq but thinks that the Obama policies are working?  That's the formulation she generally uses on the subject of Iraq.  But if you are against ground forces, how can you support the Obama policies that center on the use of ground forces and air power?  If you are honest and logical, you cannot.  And remember, most people agree that Hillary is logical; it's just that pesky "honest" label that few would bestow on her.