More Signs of Hillary’s Enthusiasm Gap

September 19th, 2016

Going into this Presidential race, we already knew Hillary Clinton was possibly the least popular Democratic Presidential candidate in modern history. (Say what you want about George McGovern, but he had a huge cadres of young volunteers, not a graying army of paid toadies.) Now we’re seeing yet more signs of just how little enthusiasm there is for Granny Lich outside the demographic of rich millionaires who need political favors:

  • There’s an enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats this year. “A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 46 percent of Trump backers were “very enthusiastic,” compared with only 33 percent of Clinton supporters. And a New York Times/CBS News poll saw Trump outperforming Clinton by the same metric, 45 percent to 36 percent.”
  • While Republicans are seeing a surge in voting registration, Democrats are not. (Note: That’s from August, so ignore the stale poll data.)
  • The Clinton/Kaine campaign book Stronger Together is bombing. “After a week on the shelves, the book has sold fewer than 3,000 copies.” Those are pretty good numbers for a first-time novelist; they’re a disaster for a formerly “inevitable” Presidential favorite.
  • Trump is even making inroads into Clinton’s key demographic of black voters. “Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday. Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.” Hillary’s campaign path to victory was always predicated on getting near-Obama level black voting participation, something that was already going to be difficult; now it looks impossible. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Expect to hear more about some of these topics Real Soon Now…

    LinkSwarm for September 16, 2016

    September 16th, 2016

    It’s Friday! Something to be thankful for!

    Its 52 days until the election! At least we can be thankful it isn’t more! (Alternate theory: We’ve all died and gone to Hell, and will be watching this Presidential race for the rest of eternity…)

  • Donald Trump widens lead in LA Times poll. “The poll shows Trump leading Clinton, 47%-41%.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • Another poll puts Trump up by eight in Iowa. Downside: Same poll has Trump up by only seven in Texas. There’s no way in Hell or Terlingua that’s happening, but let’s hope Battleground Texas cons some national Democratic donors into throwing more money down that particular rathole based on that poll… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • Scott Adams on Hillary’s 9/11 collapse: “The optics of a potential commander-in-chief collapsing at that holy place, and on an important anniversary, rendered her unelectable in my opinion.”
  • Hillary Clinton has stage-three Parkinson’s disease and suffers from seizures, according to three sources who have had a personal relationship with the Democratic Party presidential nominee.” Grains of salt, anonymous sources disclaimer, yadda yadda.
  • Did I miss this from 2015? “The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.” Including Frank Giustra. But why would you trust such a notoriously right-wing news outlet as The Guardian? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “It Was Easier To Cure Trump Of His Trumpiness Than Hillary of Her Hillaryness.” “For Hillary, the problem runs deeper. People think she’s corrupt and dishonest. That’s because she’s corrupt and dishonest.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Email leak exposes Democratic Party Pay-for-Play scheme, despite cleverly hiding their intent by actually using the phrase “pay-for-play.” Just think: This would have been a major story dominating the news for months if it were a Republican Administration. In the age of Obama and Hillary, it’s just another selection on a vast buffet of corruption. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • America’s trust in media hits all time low:

    Well, what did they expect when they went all in for Hillary? And now Trump is climbing in the polls — 6 points up in the new L.A. Times poll — and they’ve already squandered their credibility. They can’t help her now. They tried too hard before. Too bad the Democratic Party didn’t give us a democratic experience this time. They foisted a candidate on us, they rigged it, with the assistance of the media. And now the candidate we didn’t want zombie-walks and stumbles to the finish line, and there is nothing the Party or the media can do to stir up our affection. Meanwhile, the man the media loved to hate is powering through to the Presidency, looking only stronger for all the shots he took.

  • More Americans murdered in Chicago since 2001 than U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
  • The European Dream gives way to nightmare:

    Viktor Orbán, together with the prime ministers of the Visegrad countries and the Ukrainian prime minister, took part in a discussion where he highlighted: a whole generation of European politicians had a “secret dream”, that they can use the EU to achieve the weakening of the member states’ national, religious, and historic identities, and that all this would be replaced by a new European identity. But we found out there is no such identity that could replace the old ones, he said. He added: now it is proven that the only successful countries are the ones with strong identities.

    (Hat tip Director Blue.)

  • Someone is learning how to take down the Internet.

    Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical Internet services. Who would do this? It doesn’t seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It’s not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes — and especially their persistence — points to state actors. It feels like a nation’s military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar… The data I see suggests China.

  • Former Ohio mayor arrested for raping a 4-year old. Guess which party they were a member of, and guess how deeply the Washington Post buried that information.
  • Have an Android? Enjoy your Big Brother inside.
  • Happy Land Social Club arsonist dies in prison. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • The end of the Euro?
  • Austin to hire an official Social justice Warrior.
  • Local Texas school districts try to reduce or repeal Local Option Homestead Exemptions, get smacked down by Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton.
  • A Big Basket of Presidential Race Updates

    September 15th, 2016

    Too much news and not enough time to blog about it, so enjoy a big ol dump of presidential race news:

  • Donald Trump up three in Florida, five in Ohio.
  • Former Secret Service agent says there’s something seriously wrong with Hillary’s health.
  • Jonah Goldberg on what Hillary’s health issue tells us about the media:

    As this pneumonia episode demonstrates, Clinton’s real problem isn’t her health but the entirely valid perception that she’s dishonest, secretive and exploits “the system” — including the support of the mainstream media — for her benefit.

    In 2008, news outlets openly speculated about whether Sen. John McCain was too frail to be president. NBC News ran an Associated Press story under the headline, “1 in 4 chance McCain may not survive 2nd term.”

    People remember these things. When Clinton faltered on Sunday, she not only humiliated her most loyal servants, who were kept in the dark by a campaign terrified of playing it straight with voters and the media, she also made countless people say, “Looks like Drudge was right again.”

  • Reporting on Hillary’s collapse means that I never had a chance to talk about her “basket of deplorables” comment, where she went full Social Justice Warrior and said that one-quarter of America is “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.”
  • 50 Disgusting Hillary Facts Legacy Media are Hiding From You.”
  • More Guccifer 2.0 docs. Haven’t really looked at those yet either.
  • Oh, and Colin Powell’s email also got hacked, leading to the least surprising political revelation ever: Hillary Clinton still hates Obama. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Also, CBS News “run by Obama advisor Ben Rhodes’ brother, censors Powell’s accusation that Clinton is still ‘d***king bimbos,’ after editing Bill’s Monday admission that his wife ‘frequently’ suffers from fainting spells.”
  • A random Slashdot comment nails it:

    The most racist thing out there, is the whole DNC platform that expects black people to continue to vote DNC candidates, without so much as even pandering, simply by tossing out the race card over every little thing.

    It is obvious that crying Racism is the ONLY thing left the Democrats have with respect to Hillary’s campaign. And that is, by itself racist. And the black community is starting to wake up to the pure racism of low expectations that the DNC has of them.

    Can’t have voter ID laws, because the DNC says Black people can’t figure out how to get a free voter ID. But that isn’t racist.

    Can’t have single day voting, because DNC says Black People can’t figure out how to fill out an absentee ballot or get to the polls on time. But that isn’t racist.

    IF you simply look at the excuses being made on behalf of black people, they are all telling black people that they are incapable of doing normal activities, simply because … they are black.And I find that extremely distasteful and as fucking racist as anything.

    Black people aren’t as stupid, lazy, incapable as the DNC is making them out to be. But I am a racist for pointing out how stupid the DNC position is for these people.

  • How two trolls suckered the media into believing that a random frog meme was a racist symbol.
  • And hats off to whichever 4Channer did this one:

    Plus a bonus meme for your time:

    joker-pepe

  • Texas vs. California Update for September 14, 2016

    September 14th, 2016

    Time for another Texas vs. California update:

  • Vance Ginn makes the case that Texas is still kicking California’s ass:

    After descending into a deep valley during the recession, California’s economy has recently grown at a faster rate than in Texas, where the drop in oil prices and higher value of the dollar have negatively affected the mining and manufacturing sectors. However, during the last decade, the productive, real private sector growth has increased by 13.6 percent in California compared with a robust 29.1 percent in Texas.

    This growth translates into output per person in Texas increasing almost four times more than in California in that period, meaning economic output has far outpaced population growth.

    Although contemporary economic growth in California has led to a higher annual job creation rate than in Texas since April 2015, this only tells part of the story.

    Since December 2007 when the last national recession started, total civilian employment increased in California by 1.2 million while it increased by 1.7 million in Texas, with a labor force two-thirds the size of California’s. This increase in employment in Texas constitutes about one-third of all jobs created nationwide — truly remarkable given recent headwinds!

    This phenomenal job creation contributed to Texas’ unemployment rate (4.6 percent) being at or below California’s rate (5.5 percent) for 121 straight months, or since July 2006. But the official unemployment rate only accounts for those actually looking for work, a better gauge of labor force health would be the share of the population employed, which has been higher in Texas than in California since at least 2000.

    More economic output and job creation over time in Texas has contributed to less poverty. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ supplemental poverty measure, which accounts for the local cost of living, shows that Texas’ rate matches the national average while California has the nation’s highest poverty rate

    Income inequality has also been higher in California than in Texas for years. For example, the average of total income held by the top 10 percent of income earners from 2000 to 2012 was 49.9 percent in California compared with 48.8 percent in Texas.

    The results are pretty clear that California’s progressive policies of having the highest marginal personal income tax rate, cumbersome regulations, huge unfunded pension obligations, an out of control lawsuit environment, and other policies reduce economic opportunity.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • High earners are leaving blue states like California for red states like Texas:

    For generations, the Golden State developed a reputation as the ultimate destination of choice for millions of Americans. No longer. Since 2000 the state has lost 1.75 million net domestic migrants, according to Census Bureau estimates. And even amid an economic recovery, the pattern of outmigration continued in 2014, with a loss of 57,900 people and an attraction ratio of 88.5, placing the Golden State 13th from the bottom, well behind longtime people exporters Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana. California was a net loser of domestic migrants in all age categories.

    Snip.

    Much of the discussion about millennial migration tends to focus on high-cost, dense urban regions such as those that dominate New York, Massachusetts and, of course, California. Yet the IRS data tells us a very different story about migrants aged 26 to 34. Here it’s Texas in the lead, and by a wide margin, followed by Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Maine, Florida and New Hampshire. Once again New York and Illinois stand out as the biggest losers in this age category.

    Perhaps more important for the immediate future may be the migration of people at the peak of their careers, those aged 35 to 54. These are also the age cohorts most likely to be raising children. The top four are the same in both cohorts. Among the 35 to 44 age group, it’s Texas, followed by Florida, South Carolina and North Dakota. Among the 45 to 54 cohort, Texas, followed by South Carolina, Florida and North Dakota.

  • California just raised your food costs.
  • And agricultural producers are not happy:

    The Governor signed this ag overtime bill in the same year that minimum wage legislation was also passed that will take California to the highest minimum wage as well as legislation forcing California to adopt additional greenhouse gas regulations for businesses in California.

    California is the only state in the country subject to such regulations. Today’s signing occurred despite numerous requests by the agricultural industry to meet with the Governor to discuss our concerns. The message is clear. California simply doesn’t care.

  • Ca;ifornia companies have a hard time attracting workers:
  • More than two-thirds (70 percent) of organizations in California indicated that they have had difficulty recruiting for full-time regular positions in the last 12 months, similar to 68 percent nationally.
  • California organizations were more likely than organizations nationally to report competition from other employers (56 percent), qualified candidates rejecting compensation packages (28 percent), qualified candidates not being able to move to their local area (21 percent), or a relocation or a relocation package not being competitive or not being offered (12 percent) as top reasons for hiring difficulty.
  • Why California can’t build more housing. “Labor unions—which ostensibly stand for working class interests—will not stand for new construction unless it is accompanied by carve-outs and cronyist regulations that artificially boost their compensation.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “California’s unfunded pension debts may be larger than acknowledged.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “The biggest problem faced by the State of California is not ‘climate change’ or ‘poverty it is the overreaching power of California government itself, namely the California Legislature and Administration, and the threats that this Democrat establishment poses to California’s future, particularly with regard to the economy and individual liberty. California Democrats are celebrating the passage of new climate change legislation that provides California government with broad, sweeping new powers to drastically curb greenhouse gas reductions without regard to economic impact or the basic rights of businesses and individuals.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Palo Alto decides that they hate, hate, hate that golden goose.
  • Maybe that’s why some observers are telling people “If You Own A Home In Palo Alto, CA; Sell It Now.” As the median price of homes has actually started dropping, though from admittedly already insane heights…
  • “Case Study: How Politicians Motivate Companies to Leave California.”
  • Orange County clerk took bribes to make charges disappear.
  • Corrupt Oakland police sentenced. There are all sorts of real winners in this story…
  • LAX Police Assistant Chief Resigns Amid Corruption Allegations.”
  • University of California hires India-based IT outsourcer, lays off tech workers. “The layoffs will happen at the end of February, but before the final day arrives the IT employees expect to train foreign replacements from India-based IT services firm HCL. The firm is working under a university contract valued at $50 million over five years.” This might be a good time to throw in a “How’s that $15 minimum wage working out for you, San Francisco,” but there’s another factor at work: “Joe Bengfort, the CIO for the UCSF campus, said the campus is facing ‘difficult circumstances’ because of declining reimbursement and the impact of the Affordable Healthcare Act, which has increased the volume of patients but limits reimbursement to around 55 cents on the dollar, he said.” So San Franciscans IT workers are losing their jobs thanks to ObamaCare.
  • “Texas has proven it’s possible to have both much lower crime and a lower rate of imprisonment. Indeed, Texas’ FBI index crime rate, which accounts for both violent crime and property crime, has fallen more sharply than it has nationally, posting a 29 percent drop from 2005 to 2014, the latest full year for which official data is available.”
  • “It turns out that the average property tax bill required to support BART’s proposed $3.5 billion bond measure on the November ballot could be as much as four times what the transit agency claimed…That’s because legal language in Measure RR allows BART to issue bonds at up to the state limit of 12 percent interest.” 12%? With 30 year U.S. Treasuries running under 2%? The fact they think they may have to go that high to attract investors suggests how worried bond traders are about the future of California’s economy…
  • Some are less than enthused about BART’s bond proposal:

    BART officials want voters to trust them with another $3.5 billion of taxpayer money. But they’ve done nothing to earn that trust.

    Instead, they have recklessly spent what they have, grossly understated how much their ballot proposal would raise property tax bills and devised plans to use money from the measure, intended for capital projects, to indirectly cover inflated labor costs.

    Voters in Alameda County, Contra Costa and San Francisco should say no — hell no. They should reject Measure RR on the Nov. 8 ballot.

    Despite the problems facing the transit agency, it makes no sense to approve five decades of extra taxes when Measure RR lacks a logical budget, a timeline for service improvements and provisions ensuring taxpayers and riders get what they’re promised.

    The measure would authorize the district to borrow $3.5 billion through bond sales as part of a larger plan to upgrade BART’s infrastructure. The ballot wording conveniently omits that the district would tax property owners for 48 years to pay off the debt.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • Speaking of California bonds: Proposition 53 explained.
  • California’s legislature passes extension of sexual assault statue of limitations mainly over Bill Cosby. Combine this with the trend of colleges redefining rape to “any sex a woman later regrets,” and suddenly the state has the ability to prosecute anyone who ever had sex in California…
  • Leprosy Scare in California Elementary School. “There are approximately 6,500 cases of leprosy in the United States, and 90 percent of the cases are immigrants from countries where leprosy is endemic.With the increase in illegal immigrants and refugees in recent years, diseases thought to be eradicated in this country — like tuberculosis, polio, measles and leprosy — have unfortunately reemerged in the United States.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Image Comics to move from Berkeley to Portland.
  • Cow Fart Regulations Approved By California’s Legislature.” No, not an Onion piece.
  • Follow-up: Pacific Sunwear exits bankruptcy.
  • This Week in Clinton Corruption for September 13, 2016

    September 13th, 2016

    Yesterday was devoted to lies about Hillary Clinton’s obvious ill health (and her team’s blatant lying about it). Today is all about Clinton’s corruption.

    You mean you’d pick on a sick old woman?

    In this case: absolutely!

  • Clinton Foundation Is Charity Fraud Of Epic Proportions.”

    When Ortel tried to match up the Clinton Foundation’s tax filings with the disclosure reports from its major donors, he said he started to find problems. That includes records from the foundation’s many offshoots—including the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Clinton Global Initiative—as well as its foreign subsidiaries.

    “I decided it would be fun to cross-check what their donors thought they did when they donated to the Clinton Foundation, and that’s when I got really irritated,” he said. “There are massive discrepancies between what some of the major donors say they gave to the Clinton Foundation to do, and what the Clinton Foundation said what they got from the donors and what they did with it.”

    As previously reported, last year the Clinton Foundation was forced to issue corrected tax filings for several years to correct donation errors. But Ortel said many of the discrepancies remain. “I’m against charity fraud. I think people in both parties are against charity fraud, and this is a charity fraud,” he said.

    To be sure, Ortel’s efforts were to be commended: digging through the foundation’s numbers can not have been easy, considering that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put the Clinton Foundation on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits in 2015. Furthermore, the Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. That’s because the organization spent the vast bulk of its windfall on “administration, travel, salaries and bonuses”, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.

  • More: “An educated guess, based upon ongoing analysis of the public record begun in February 2015, is that the Clinton Foundation entities are part of a network that has defrauded donors and created illegal private gains of approximately $100 billion in combined magnitude, and possibly more, since 23 October 1997.”
  • How did Clinton toady Sydney Blumenthal get his hands on top secret NSA reports less than 24 hours after they were presented? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Hillary’s lackeys went on an email deletion spree after the subpoenas were issued.
  • Trump: “People who have nothing to hide don’t smash phones.” (Hat tip: Director Blue)
  • Clinton Foundation officials repeatedly skirted or ignored federal laws and regulations while converting the non-profit from its tax-exempt purpose of building a presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas, into a $2 billion global machine selling political influence and access on an unprecedented scale, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.”
  • FBI managers instructed to exonerate Hillary Clinton.”
  • If you want to restore the rule of law, you need to vote for Trump.
  • “‘Crooked Hillary’ nickname isn’t going away.”
  • ”A Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”
  • Matt Lauer criticized for not being sufficiently deferential to Queen Hillary.
  • “A media organization demanding that other media organizations stop reporting on an obviously newsworthy story, exactly because it’s hurting the liberal Democratic criminal they favor.”
  • Obama’s Justice Department seems to be keen on giving Clinton’s IT people immunity…and then doing nothing with the information.
  • Random Slashdot comment on how in-the-tank for Hillary (and hypocrisy) “Public Citizen” is: “That’s right: a 501(c)(4) corporation made a movie with the express political purpose of protesting the Supreme Court decision that a 501(c)(4) corporation could make a movie with an express political purpose!”
  • A pre-collapse Hillary, enjoying smaller than expected crowds, walls off portion of room to give illusion of fullness.
  • What happens if Hillary drops out? However, I don’t think the DNC would actually try to foist Chelsea off on us as the Democratic candidate, for a host reasons too extensive to explicate here.
  • More on the same theme. Also, hats off to the New York Post graphics department for this:

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “The media elites are in a panic. They witnessed the meltdown of their candidate in broad daylight and can feel that shiver up their spine — except that this time, it is not the delight of victory they are feeling, but the dread of defeat.”
  • And as a bonus, here are a few more links about Hillary’s obvious ill-health:

  • “The most charitable reading of this timeline is that her campaign — presumably with the blessing and perhaps insistence of the candidate — fully intended to keep her illness a secret from the public. Let’s be clear about what this means: Her campaign intended to lie.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • They even avoided the ER just to conceal her medical treatment from the public.
  • Today’s spin on the why of the lie: It’s all her staff’s fault.
  • Clinton News Network is gonna Clinton News Network. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Longtime Huffington Post writer fired for questioning Hillary’s health vindicated. “It turns out Dr. Drew and I lost our media perches for simply sharing incontrovertible truth, which I knew at the time: Hillary Clinton’s health is not just bad. It’s not just allergies. Hillary Clinton’s health is horrific.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • How Sick Is Hillary Clinton?

    September 12th, 2016

    In case you missed it over the weekend, Hillary Clinton collapsed in pubic.

    Here’s the video:

    “Her campaign later said that she was overheated and went to rest at her daughter’s apartment. She later came out from the apartment to demonstrate her condition to the media. She did not take questions.”

    Yup, nothing at all suspicious there. As Ace of Spades notes: “If someone was unsteady on their feet and needed to be propped up, then buckled and fell, wouldn’t you take that person to the hospital? You would — unless this was a fairly frequent occurrence you had just gotten used to dealing with in-house.”

    Team Hillary’s spin is that she just happens to be suffering from a number of completely unrelated health issues that all just happened to occur in a short period of time. The coughing? Allergies. The collapse? That was because she was “overheated.” No, wait, we mean she has pneumonia.

    And now she’s cancelled a planned campaign trip to California.

    You know what they call someone who suffers a bunch of unrelated illnesses in a short period of time? Sickly. Or just plain sick. If she was a character in a Gothic novel, they’d be asking “Will sickly Mrs. Clinton succumb to the baleful atmosphere of vast, chilly Kickback Manor?”

    Here’s a rundown of all Clinton’s numerous recent maladies. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    Even the mainstream media has been forced to admit that it’s a real issue.

    Does Clinton have Parkinson’s Disease? At least one doctor thinks so:

    Among the Hillary emails released by Julian Assange was one by an aide (Jake Sullivan, if I remember right) giving her a summary on the effectiveness of a drug called Provigil — a drug often used to combat the mental lapses and lack of focus typical of Parkinson’s sufferers.

    The video does have a Zapruderish “back and to the left, back and to the left” quality to it. So be prepared to tighten or loosen your tin foil helmet, per your own comfort level.

    Nonetheless, much of it seems plausible.

    He explains the freeze in front of the crowd many have discussed at 11:15. He says this is a common Parkinson’s reaction to overstimulous — the brain freezes, and needs a sort of ‘reset” to get going again. He notes that she repeats the words her handler says to her during the freeze, which he claims is a common Parkinson’s symptom, echoing the last thing you heard to get your brain firing regularly again.

    He also explains the coughing fits. He says this is not bronchitis. Rather, he claims, Parkinson’s patients frequently have swallowing problems. They accidentally swallow food or liquid into their airways, their lungs. This aspirated food and water then causes pneumonia.

    He doesn’t say this, but it can be guessed out: Per his theory, Hillary has had this case of pneumonia for a long time because she keeps getting pneumonia due to this tendency towards aspiration pneumonia.

    It should be noted that aspiration pneumonia is a common symptom of Parkinson’s — indeed, it’s the leading cause of death among Parkinson’s sufferers.

    Here’s the video Dr. Ted Noel put together:

    And here’s that painful extended coughing fit she suffered earlier this month:

    That doesn’t sound like “allergies” to me. (Here’s Rush Limbaugh on Hillary’s coughing spasm.)

    Here’s more on the possibility Hillary has aspirational pneumonia:

    I raise this second possibility because of Hillary’s history of neurological illnesses (blood clot in brain, concussion), hints raised on the internet in Wikileaks documents and by others that she may have a neurological disease like Parkinson’s, and her by now well documented history of recurrent coughing fits. This second possibility is that she has an aspiration pneumonia.

    Aspiration pneumonia occurs when fluids and food particles that normally enter the esophagus instead enter the windpipe and lungs. It is commonly seen in neurological conditions like strokes and Parkinson’s disease or similar diseases where the nerves to the swallowing mechanism are not working properly. This is especially worrisome because it is likely to recur given the underlying, usually incurable disease process and because it can be a life-threatening event.

    I consider aspiration pneumonia to be the more likely cause because it unifies all the pieces of disparate information that are available on Hillary’s medical condition. A diagnosis of aspiration pneumonia raises profoundly troubling implications for her possible election as president.

    Remember Dr. Drew Pinsky expressing concern about her health and how Team Hillary got Google to hide search results on Hillary’s health. (And they’re still doing it. Even today, Google won’t auto complete “Hillary Health,” only “Hillary Health Care.” Of course, it’s a Pyrrhic victory, since the second search autocomplete result is now “hillary clinton seizure.”)

    How bad would Clinton’s health have to get for Democrats to consider replacing her? And would it even be legal to do so at this point? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

    LinkSwarm for September 9, 2016

    September 9th, 2016

    A short LinkSwarm for a short week…

  • Trump up by two in CNN poll.
  • Democrats on the verge of panic. Usual WSJ hoops apply. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • In the course of mocking Gary Johnson for not knowing which Syrian city is which, New York Times actually ends up making a worse mistake, eventually making a correction to their correction’s correction.
  • Conservative State Senator Andy Biggs wins his race for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District by 9 votes over more liberal GoDaddy executive Christine Jones, which will trigger an automatic recount.
  • NHS Rations health care to obese people and smokers. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Muslims in Buffalo, NY Say “F**k America!” After Being Arrested for Food Stamp Fraud.”
  • Muslim immigrants and the decline of Buffalo.
  • Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is an expert in regenerative medicine. And by “regenerative medicine” I mean academic fraud and killing patients. And that’s not all! He’s also a liar of such epic proportions he convinced his girlfriend that they were going to be personally married by the Pope…
  • The Swiss watch industry is doomed. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Nuclear ant colony hell. (Hat tip: Moe Lane)
  • Welcome Empower Texans To The Blogroll

    September 8th, 2016

    Here’s another link I’ve been meaning to add to the blogroll for a while: Empower Texans. Michael Quinn Sullivan’s group (a companion organization to Texans for Fiscal Responsibility) does a good job of covering Texas political news and drawing attention to government abuses.

    Well worth checking out.

    Houston Jury Smacks SEIU With $5.3 Million Award

    September 7th, 2016

    Here’s a rare thing: A union actually being held accountable for breaking the law:

    A Harris County jury on Tuesday awarded a Houston commercial cleaning firm $5.3 million in damages, finding that a labor union’s aggressive organizing campaign went too far when it maligned the reputation of the company. It opens the door for more employers to sue unions over hardball tactics often used in membership drives and contract disputes.

    The jury, by a 10-2 vote, found for Professional Janitorial Service in a suit the company brought nine years ago against the Service Employees International Union, which targeted the company as part of its “Justice for Janitors” organizing campaign and wrongly claimed Professional Janitorial Service had violated wage, overtime and other labor laws.

    The case was the first time that a jury has found against a union in a business defamation or disparagement case, according to a search of legal records by the company’s law firm, AZA of Houston.

    “The jury found what PJS and its employees have known for more than a decade,” Brent Southwell, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “The SEIU is a corrupt organization that is rotten to its core.”

    Snip.

    The trial, which lasted four weeks, represented the first time the SEIU, which has nearly 2 million members nationwide, has had to defend its tactics in front to a jury. Other cases, including a federal racketeering lawsuit filed by the international food, maintenance and cleaning company Sodexo in 2011, were settled before they ever got before a jury.

    Empower Texans has more background on SEIU tactics:

    One of the tactics many unions use to access potential members is “salting,” and the SEIU is no exception. Salting is the tactic of sending a union-affiliate to a targeted employer to apply for, and then accept a position working for the company. Since unions are often prohibited from contacting employees at work, salts do it for them.

    Two of the salts used against PJS were Adriana Menchu and Eleanor Parada; both have been reoccurring figures during the SEIU trial.

    The union used Menchu’s name in various campaigns, lawsuits, and fliers. In one flier she was quoted saying, “They don’t give us gloves or masks to clean. I know a woman who brings her own cleaning supplies from home just so she can protect her health.” Which PJS refuted with their longstanding policy prohibiting the use of any outside cleaning agents unless supplied by the company.

    SEIU fliers claimed that PJS failed to pay Menchu for hours worked, but internal union emails contradicted that statement saying that PJS was trying to “buy” Menchu off by giving her a raise. More evidence that they knew the information they were releasing was false.

    One press release read, “Mostly immigrant janitors were instructed to work ‘off-the-clock’ and had pay withheld by the city’s largest locally-based cleaning company, Professional Janitorial Service (PJS), according to a new lawsuit filed today.”

    Never revealing that SEIU was the party behind the lawsuit, or that the union planted the “janitors” they were referring to.

    Parada was another salt frequently used in lawsuits, and was quoted in an SEIU press release about the unfair labor practice suit they filed saying, “We work hard, but PJS thinks they can treat us however they want…That’s why PJS janitors are taking a stand today – so we can have some basic protections.”

    It’s worth noting that until the SEIU came to Houston to unionize janitors PJS had never faced labor violation allegations, had not been investigated by the Department of Labor or National Labor Relations Board, and had not had unfair labor practice lawsuits filed against them. Also, out of the 20 ULPs the union filed against PJS, 19 were dismissed with the last being rectified by simply having the employer post safety signs in the workplace.

    This (Half?) Week in Clinton Corruption for September 6, 2016

    September 6th, 2016

    So right after I put up two separate posts on Hillary Clinton’s corruption, the FBI drops the full (and by “full” I mean “heavily redacted”) summary report on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Jim Geraghty summarizes salient points from the FBI report in Monday’s Morning Jolt:

    1. The FBI investigation began because of a referral from the U.S. Intelligence Community Inspector General. This is not the vast right-wing conspiracy or one of Hillary Clinton’s partisan foes; the IG’s office is staffed by those whose professional duty is to protect our nation’s secrets. Looking at the evidence, they grew concerned that a crime may have or is likely to have been committed. The inspector general, I. Charles McCullough, III, is career law enforcement: FBI, Department of the Treasury, NSA.

    2. The FBI cannot prove conclusively that hostile foreign actors accessed her server; but they did find that “hostile foreign actors successfully gained access to the personal e-mail accounts of individuals with whom Clinton was in regular contact and, in doing so, obtained e-mails sent to or received by Clinton on that personal account.”

    3. As we all know, Clinton claimed she used the private server for “convenience” because she only wanted to use one device. The FBI found 13 total mobile devices used to send e-mails; they asked for them and Clinton’s lawyers said they could not locate any of those devices. The FBI identified five iPads used by Clinton; three were turned over to the FBI. Hillary’s Blackberry phones were off-the-shelf from AT&T stores around the Washington, D.C. area. Apparently Clinton didn’t like upgrades; “According to Abedin, it was not uncommon for Clinton to use a new Blackberry for a few days and then immediately switch it out for an older version with which she was more familiar.”

    No one knows where the old phones are; in two instances, her phones were destroyed with a hammer. This means there are eleven or so mobile phones with God knows how much classified information on them effectively missing.

    4. Clinton was obligated to get permission to use her personal device; at no time did she do so. Everything she has said about her use of the personal device being permitted is completely false.

    5. “State employees alleged that John Bentel, [a senior State Department official, handling IT for senior officials] discouraged employees from raising concerns about Clinton’s use of personal e-mail.” When interviewed by the FBI, Bentel denied anyone raising any concerns, that he had discouraged anyone from raising those concerns, or that he was aware she was using a personal account for State business. This seems implausible. As Clinton herself said to the FBI, it was common knowledge among State Department employees.

    6. This should be thrown in the face of any Clinton defender who cites Colin Powell as an exculpatory witness:

    7. “In 2011, a notice to all State employees was sent on Clinton’s behalf, which recommended employees avoid conducting State business on personal e-mail accounts due to information security concerns.” Clinton said she didn’t recall sending that notice or ever getting any advice on using personal accounts.

    Clinton told the FBI she could not recall or not remember 39 times.

    Here’s the really galling part, considering the screams of outrage that greet any comment about Clinton’s age or health in this election cycle:

    CLINTON stated she received no instructions or direction regarding the preservation or production of records from State during the transition out of her role as Secretary of State in early 2013. However, in December of 2012, CLINTON suffered a concussion and then around the New Year had a blood clot. Based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received. CLINTON did not have any discussions with aides about turning over her email records, nor did anyone from State request them. She believed her work-related emails were captured by her practice of sending email to the state.gov email address of her staff. CLINTON was unaware of the requirement to turn over printed records at that time. Her physical records were boxed up and handled by aides.

    In other Clinton Corruption news:

  • Also interesting about the FBI report is what was left out: “There is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the former secretary of state about emails to and from Clinton aides regarding Clinton Foundation business.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Did Team Clinton destroy evidence? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “I consider the Clinton Foundation to be a charity fraud network. I base this conclusion on my review of extensive data about its operations including the activities of the Clinton family and their friends in Haiti, a nation that has suffered many disasters, both natural and manmade.”
  • “There are only two things I can identify at which the Clinton Foundation excels: putting cash in the bank and spending it.”
  • How can former State Department employee Cheryl Mills be Hillary Clinton’s counsel during the investigation when she was also a material witness and participant in the crimes being investigated? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Ashe Schow notes that you can’t keep track of Clinton scandals without a scorecard. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Hillary Clinton does not sound at all well. No, really. She has like a five minute coughing fit she tries to talk through. The last time I heard someone cough that much, they died at the hopsital later that week.
  • Inside Bill Clinton’s $18 million phony baloney job as “honorary chancellor” of for-profit Laureate International Universities. $18 million is a whole lot of “honorary.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)