Tag: Hillary Clinton

More speculations about Trump’s cabinet

8:43 pm

This article gives a nice overview of the people who it appears are being considered for positions in a Trump presidency, should he win.

Unfortunately, it does not give a lot of background about the people mentioned. Many, like Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich, are well known. Others, like businessman Donald McGahn, are unknown. Some, like Senator Bob Corker, suggested as potential Secretary of State, would be a disaster, based on his past history of getting the Iran deal approved.
Some. like Harold Hamm and Steve Mnuchin, have been described here at BtB at the links behind their names, Hamm positively and Mnuchin negatively..

There is more at the link. Read it all. This list is a start. It will require vetting to get a sense of what we can expect from a Trump administration.

Note that there is a reason I am so focused on Trump and not Clinton. Trump remains an unknown, who might be worth voting for if it appears his plans as President are reasonable, something that might still be possible, despite all the negative reports I’ve given him. Moreover, there is a chance that Trump can be positively influenced. Learning as much about him as possible increases that possibility.

Clinton however is not an unknown. She is corrupt, a liar, and an avowed socialist who believes strongly in increasing the size and power of the federal government, as does the entire political party that supports her. To deny any of this is to live with your head in the sand. She thus needs no vetting.

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Health insurance rates in California to rise

1:46 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance rates on the Obamacare exchange in California will rise 13% next year.

Large increases on Obamacare exchanges have been par for the course throughout the country this year, which is not really a surprise for anyone who was willing to read more than one sentence of a plethora of predictions made by conservatives in 2010 before Obamacare was passed. They predicted then, as this article notes is now happening, that

Fewer people are signing up through the exchanges than anticipated, and they’re using more health care services than anticipated. That’s left insurers with fewer customers to share the overall cost.

Obviously, according to Obama and Clinton and the entire Democratic Party, the solution to this failed government health program is an even bigger government health program! Won’t that just be peachy-keen!

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Why no one should be surprised by AG Lynch’s failure to uphold the law

10:11 am

This story, about how Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused during testimony to Congress this week to admit the clear illegality of giving classified information to people without clearance, should not surprise anyone. Nor should her partisan willingness to protect Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton.

Before she was even ratified by the Republican-led Senate in 2015, she was exposed as someone who was easily willing to ignore the law during her nomination hearings. As I wrote then,

The video of Lynch’s non-answer to Cruz’s question is quite shocking. I dare you to watch it and tell me afterward that this administration and Democratic Party is not a threat to your freedom and rights.

Cruz was not afraid to buck the trend and vote against her. The majority of the Republicans in Congress however were, as always, wimps, and let the Democrats get her approved. We are paying for this now.

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New Mexico insurance company abandoning Obamacare exchange

5:52 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A major New Mexico health insurance company has decided to stop selling individual insurance policies through the Obamacare exchange.

Apparently, people who got insurance through the exchange were generally sicker to begin with, and were poorer (80% required subsidies). The company decided the cost was too much.

Meanwhile, Obama has declared that the solution to this very bad government-run health care system is more government!

President Barack Obama, reviewing his signature health law six years into its implementation, is suggesting Congress and his White House successor add a government-run, or public, insurance option to the Affordable Care Act and increase federal financial assistance for people to buy coverage.

The problem with this proposal is this is exactly what the Obamacare exchanges were, except that the health insurance itself was provided by private companies. Obama is suggesting we expand the exchanges (which have failed miserably), but augment that failure with a system kind of like the Veterans Administration, where the government provides the healthcare. That should work just great, assuming we lived in a fantasyland invented by progressive leftists who pay no attention to reality.

But then, I think we do, considering how many people seem willing to vote for Hillary Clinton, a big supporter of Obamacare and a long time proponent of it.

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A blunt honest appraisal of America today

12:32 pm

The coming dark age: This op-ed encapsulates perfectly my despairing sense of today’s American culture, and what it will bring to the future.

After noting the effort by Obama and the Democrats these past eight years to divide Americans by race, party, gender, religion, and creed, he then adds:

Into this, Republicans are responding not with a candidate who will rise above the fray and try to unite us all back into common culture, but a man with no temperament to do anything other than divide. His loudest supporters embrace a “convert or die” mentality. We are either with him or against him.

Republicans have embraced a man who takes tribalism to new levels and, in the process, have put on blinders and willfully ignored how much he excites white nationalists and the race baiters of the right. For every New Black Panther in love with Barack Obama there are two white nationalists willing to march through hell for Donald Trump.

In his conclusion he adds

I’m afraid 2016 is the beginning of a chaotic time and not a one off occasion. We may look back on 2016 as the calm before the storm. What is most galling to me is that my party, the party I once served as an elected official, has turned to a man who has no intention of uniting the nation, who brings out the worst in absolutely everybody, and with so much on the line has so little a chance of even winning. But to point this out is to be accused of being a traitor and helping a woman I find equally offensive.

All of this is to say we get the government and national character that reflects us and right now it is all a damning indictment of our American character. How many more will die? How many more Americans will turn against each other? How many will seek blame instead of reconciliation?

Meanwhile, I am reminded of how, during the primary campaign, Ted Cruz was always willing to graciously reach out to protesters and debate the issues with them politely, face-to-face. That behavior, in modern America, has now been called “creepy” and the act of a liar.

We get the government we deserve. Be prepared for bad things in the future.

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State Department reopens investigation into Clinton private server

5:56 pm

The Obama State Department announced today that they are reopening their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the mishandling of classified material by her and her aides.

Don’t be fooled by this. The only reason the State Department is announcing that they are reopening this investigation is to deflect criticism of the Obama administration before the election. Nothing will ever come of it, as long as the Democrats control the executive branch.

And there is no guarantee anything will come of it should Trump win, though the odds for a real investigation do increase.

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The fix for Hillary Clinton is IN

8:45 am

The law is for little people: The head of the FBi today spoke to reporters, outlining in detail how Hillary Clinton and her aides repeatedly broke the law in their use of her private server to send and receive classified State Department emails. Because of these facts, he of course concluded that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges, and therefore will not make any recommendations to the Department of Justice.

You can read his entire surreal statement here.

As noted correctly here, “The cover-up is now finished.” Or as this writer noted recently

Now it seems we actually have a new social contract – do what we say and don’t resist, and in return we’ll abuse you, lie about you, take your money, and look down upon you in contempt. What a bargain!

It’s not a social contract anymore – American society today is a suicide pact we never agreed to and yet we’re expected to go first.

I say “No.”

We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. Nothing.

We make it easy for them by going along. We make it simple by defaulting to the old rules. But there are no rules anymore, certainly none that morally bind us once we are outside the presence of some government worker with a gun to force our compliance. There is only will and power and we must rediscover our own. If there is no cop sitting right there, then there is nothing to make you stop at that stop sign tonight.

They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It is especially ironic that the FBI’s announcement that it was going to help cover-up illegal activity by a high government official was made one day after the Fourth of July.

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New poll shows Trump barely winning Utah

11:44 am

More news on the upcoming November Democratic primary: A new poll in Utah shows Donald Trump getting only 29% of the vote, with Hillary Clinton getting 26%, and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson getting 16%.

The article correctly notes that Utah has been solidly Republican for decades, until now.

Bear in mind that Utah is a state that Mitt Romney won 73/25 over Barack Obama in 2012, boosted no doubt in part because of Romney’s Mormon faith. Still, John McCain won Utah in 2008 by a 63/34 margin as well. Utah has not been competitive in decades, with the smallest margin in recent times coming in 1996 — a 21-point win by Bob Dole on his way to a national defeat.

It appears that a large percentage of Utah’s conservative voters are choosing Johnson, which might be their only conservative choice, though sadly he might not be much of a conservative or libertarian as he claims From this second link:

When Johnson took the tiller in New Mexico in 1995, the budget stood at $4.397 billion. When he left in 2003, it had grown to $7.721 billion, an increase of 7.29 percent a year. Of the eleven governors who filed to run for president this year (two Democrats, Johnson, and eight Republicans), only one had a worse record on spending growth. In New Mexico, Bill Richardson, Johnson’s Democratic successor, clocked in a little better than he did, but Richardson’s successor, Susana Martinez, has shown what a fiscal conservative looks like: New Mexico currently spends less than it did when she took office. It’s not just at a state level that being more fiscally conservative than Johnson is a bipartisan achievement. Federal spending during the time Johnson was in office grew at an average annual rate of 4.49 percent. Late Clinton and early Bush weren’t as successful in their efforts to fight spending cuts as they might have been, but Johnson makes them look like Coolidge, and federal spending since then has grown at an average annual rate of 4.56 percent.

One piece of good news from the poll in the first article above. It shows down ticket Republicans doing very well, despite the poor support for the party’s presidential candidate. And that really is what is most important at this point. It is essential the public vote in as many conservatives as possible to force whomever is President to move in a conservative direction. As Milton Friedman so wisely noted,

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

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Insurance companies abandon Colorado because of Obamacare

10:20 am

Finding out what’s in it: Almost a hundred thousand Coloradans are about to lose their health insurance because of Obamacare.

More than 92,000 Coloradans will lose their Obamacare health care coverage in 2017 as four leading insurance companies scale back or eliminate their plans while others propose rate hikes of as much as 40 percent. Insurance holders with individual plans through Anthem, UnitedHealthCare, Humana and Rocky Mountain Health Plans will need to find new coverage for the 2017 coverage year, according to a Monday statement from the Colorado Division of Insurance.

But don’t worry. Thanks to the wisdom of the majority of Republican Party primary voters, when we vote in the November we will have a choice between the official Democratic candidate, a member of the party that shoved this monstrous law down our throats, and a liberal Democrat who thinks Obamacare didn’t go far enough.

We truly do get the government we deserve.

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Another look at what President Trump would likely do

9:50 am

Link here. The author tries to thoughtfully predict what Trump will do should he win the Presidency, based on his record. This quote at the article’s beginning however describes Trump quite accurately:

My biases are clear up front: I don’t trust Trump. I don’t trust his promises, because he has shown no willingness to hold to them. I don’t trust his ideology, because he proclaims that his guiding star is his own self-assurance. I trust Trump to be Trump: a man of convenience, a thinker of no great depth, a reactionary with no constitutional understanding and a willingness to maximize executive power.

The analysis is fair, however, and notes some smart things Trump might do, based on his past record, as well as the dumb things we can expect from him.

I post this not to suggest I prefer Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. I do not. Clinton is a corrupt, power-hungry leftwing ideologue who will magnify all the bad things Barack Obama has done, supported by a corrupt, power-hungry leftwing Democratic Party that likes everything Barack Obama has done. We need to do everything we can to prevent her election.

At the same time, we mustn’t blind ourselves to the problems we will face should Trump win. This article is a warning. Prepare yourself, because things are not going to be much better under a Trump presidency, and the best option for minimizing that damage is to make sure Congress is as conservative as possible.

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Why Trump and Cruz dominated campaign

10:27 am

Three stories today illustrate forcefully why voters in 2016 chose Donald Trump first as their Republican presidential candidate, with Ted Cruz a very strong second, while rejecting forcefully the establishment standard-bearers such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich.

The first story shows video of Hillary Clinton baffled because a businesswoman’s health insurance costs doubled since Obamacare was passed. Watch the video. She can’t even consider the possibility that Obamacare is the cause. She in fact says it is “a big step forward” only to have hostile groans ripple through the audience. Later she bluntly says “”What could have possibly raised your costs $400? That’s what I don’t understand?” and members of the audience once again laugh at this blindness.

Everyone knows that Obamacare has been a disaster that is driving costs up. Clinton refuses to recognize that, which is why she is having so much trouble clinching her party’s nomination, and why people dislike her so much.

The second story is about an investigation being launched by Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Senate Republicans into the squelching of conservative news stories by Facebook. Rather than figure out how to get some control over the budget, these clowns want to harass a private company. Facebook’s actions might have been politically motivated, dishonest, and aimed at censoring conservative viewpoints, but they were also entirely legal under the first amendment. As noted here, the Senate has no business investigating Facebook. The Republicans calling for this investigation should sit down and shut up. Moreover, by even focusing on this Thune is demonstrating why the Republicans who now run Congress have failed so miserably in garnering voter support.

The third story is an example why Cruz, and Trump, were successful and popular with voters In his return to Washington, Ted Cruz didn’t whine about his defeat by Trump, or attack or insult the voters. Instead, he focused in on why Trump and he did well.

“All across this country people are hungry for change. This election cycle should be a wake-up call to Washington, D.C.,” the senator from Texas said outside his office. “The frustration and volcanic anger with Washington was echoed throughout this election.”

If the Republicans had for example simply done what Ted Cruz has tried to do in Congress these past few years, get Obamacare defunded, even if it meant closing down the government, they might not now be faced with having Donald Trump as their standard-bearer. By refusing to fight for the things the voters wanted, they disqualified themselves in the voters eyes, which is why they lost.

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Employers hiring freelancers to avoid Obamacare

10:19 am

Finding out what’s in it: A new study has found that almost three-quarters of all employers have decided to hire freelance workers rather than full-time employees in order to avoid the costs of Obamacare.

After surveying 600 human resource employees and 959 freelancers, the results show a whopping 68 percent of employers said the ACA will have a “high impact” on their hiring decision with 74 percent saying they plan to increase freelance contracts.

But don’t worry. Those evil conservatives who opposed Obamacare have been defeated. The next president, one of two liberal Democrats, will work to keep Obamacare, a law Democrats shoved down our throats, working

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“We don’t need another lecture about Islamophobia.”

9:45 am

Mohammad the bomber

The religion of peace strikes again: Thirty-four are dead and almost 200 injured in suicide attacks in Belgium today.

ISIS has claimed credit for the attacks.

I think the reactions of our politicians here is of some significance, as by contrasting them we can learn a bit about each. Obama inserted a short pro-forma statement of sympathy during his prepared remarks at the start of a press conference in Cuba, then appeared to forget about the entire horrific attack. Donald Trump called for greater border security and a renewed consideration of the use of waterboarding to obtain information from captured terrorists. Hillary Clinton (at the previous link) expressed some incoherent blather about following “our values”.

Ted Cruz possibly spoke with the most clarity.

“Today’s attacks in Brussels underscores this is a war,” Cruz said. “This is not a lone war. ISIS has declared jihad. It is way past time we have a president who will acknowledge this evil and will call it by it’s name and use the full force and fury to defeat ISIS,” he continued. “Until they are defeated, these attacks will continue. Their target is each and every one of us.”

Cruz, one of five remaining presidential candidates, urged America needs a leader who is not afraid to speak about terrorism in bold terms. “We need a president who sets aside political correctness,” Cruz insisted. “We don’t need another lecture about Islamophobia.”

Cruz also criticized Trump’s proposal yesterday that we pull back from NATO.

I leave it to you to decide who appears to have the greatest grasp of the situation. And if you think I am spinning this to favor Cruz, go to the links and get a closer look at the other reactions. Note for example that, other than a twitter comment, I could not even find a story that specifically discussed Hillary Clinton’s reaction.

Update: I have added the cartoon showing Mohammad with a bomb in his turban because I think the response to these thugs has to be to defy them as blatantly as possible. I need to remember to do this more often.

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Another glorious Democratic leader speaks!

9:47 am

Dumb and dumber: In yesterdays Democratic townhall event, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not only claimed that “we didn’t lose a single person” in the regime change in Libya, she seemed unaware that

ISIS is taking up blocs of territory in Libya now, too. So have al-Qaeda affiliates like Ansar al-Sharia — the group that sacked our Benghazi consulate nearly four years ago, thanks in large part to security decisions made by State under Hillary’s leadership. We didn’t give Libya a chance — we destroyed Libya, and left nothing but a viper pit of terror networks to replace it. And Hillary thinks this is a success story.

Be sure to watch the video of Clinton at the link, where she argues that the elections in Libya have worked, installing a moderate government. I guess it was that moderate government that killed our ambassador and three others in Benghazi four years ago.

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“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

10:08 am

A new set of Hillary Clinton emails just released by the State Department includes one in which she is clearly ordering a subordinate to violate the law on how classified material should be transmitted.

Has the State Department released a smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal? In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel.

Her exact written words are the title of this post.

More here. To me, it really doesn’t matter whether Hillary Clinton is ever indicted for what are clear violations of the law in how she handled classified material while she was Secretary of State. What matters is that we, as voters, have clear evidence now that she has contempt for the law, that she willingly and nonchalantly lies about it to the public, and that she is simply not a trustworthy individual. And this story is only one of many others about Hillary Clinton that all demonstrate the same things about her.

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Hillary Clinton vows to investigate UFOs if elected

8:55 am

Well, we now know her priorities! In a meeting with the editorial board of a New Hampshire newspaper, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vowed to find out once and for all whether UFOs have been discovered by the federal government and kept secret.

Her husband Bill Clinton apparently tried and failed to uncover those buried records while he was President.

I am sure this reassures you all. While the Republicans are distracted by unimportant issues, such as terrorism, radical Islam, a weak economy, an out-of-control federal budget, and a corrupt federal bureaucracy that is abusing its power while failing to do its job, Hillary Clinton has her sights on issues of real importance.

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A real report of Hillary’s first campaign stop

11:37 am

Forget the press. Forget the spin. Read this report by an ordinary college student of her attempt to participate, as an “Everyday Iowan”, in Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign event. With great pictures.

My point here is not to lambast Clinton (of which this event is the least of her problems). My point is to lambast the press. This campaign stop was not much different than the campaign stops and photo events of all politicians, staged and managed and completely divorced from reality. Sadly the press goes along and reports the staging. This report, created by an amateur, instead gives us the reality of the event, something that the press should be doing.

Instead, our mainstream press plays along with the politicians. They should be ashamed.

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The skewed view of American inside the progressive bubble

10:10 am

Link here. The author captures well the cultural and intellectual chasm that exists between the modern American elite community, mostly leftwing, and the rest of American society. Sadly, that chasm is very clearly demonstrated by how most reporters are covering the emerging Presidential campaign. Read it and note the differences in how they approach both sides: They greet the Republicans with skepticism and scorn. They have private off-the-record dinners with Hillary Clinton.

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The library that tried to ban conservative news researchers backs down.

10:33 am

Victory for free speech: The University of Arkansas has backed down from its attempt to ban a news research team because it was using that research to publish articles critical of Hillary Clinton.

The University of Arkansas library has backed down from its decision to block the Washington Free Beacon from accessing its special collections archives following a month-long public uproar. The library suspended the Free Beacon’s research privileges in June after the outlet published a story based on audiotapes from university archives that included Hillary Clinton discussing her 1975 defense of a child rapist.

The article clearly documents that the university was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, trying to impose the ban for political reasons.

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The head of the Clinton library in Arkansas has banned researchers from a conservative media outlet.

9:33 am

Leftwing tolerance: The head of the Clinton library in Arkansas, also a donor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has banned researchers from a conservative media outlet because it used that research to publish stories critical of Hillary.

Library dean Carolyn Henderson Allen informed editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti in a June 17 letter that the library had “officially suspended” the Free Beacon‘s research privileges. The Free Beacon published the Hillary Papers, drawn from the archive of the late Clinton confidante Diane Blair, in February. Those papers are also housed in the special collections at the University of Arkansas.

“I am writing you to direct you and the Washington Beacon Press to cease and desist your ongoing violation of the intellectual property rights of the University of Arkansas with regard to your unauthorized publication of audio recordings obtained from the Roy Reed Collection,” wrote Allen.

Not only did the library ban the researchers, it wants to squelch the results of their research so that no one can read it. How open-minded and tolerant of them!

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