It’s been one of those weeks. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
This just in: The eight years of the Obama Administration have been a miserable failure.
Some ObamaCare patients are losing their plans, others are facing huge rate hikes. In Tennessee, they’re getting both. (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt.)
ObamaCare’s unraveling shows the danger of a one-size-fits-all federal program. What’s happening in Tennessee is only a nationwide harbinger. Every single neighboring state will have less competition on its ObamaCare exchanges next year. The entire state of Alabama will have only one insurer. Almost all are facing double-digit premium increases: in Mississippi a weighted average of 16%; in Kentucky 25%; in Georgia 33%.
These problems aren’t confined to the Southeast. ObamaCare exchange buyers will have only one option in nearly a third of American counties, according to an August report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s a 300% increase in single-option counties from last year. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have approved rates leading to average premium increases next year of over 26%.
Race relations have gotten worse under Obama. That’s what happens when you have George Soros spending millions to poison race relations, and let Social Justice Warriors go rampaging through your institutions…
Both Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte and Donald Trump are gaining in New Hampshire. Remember that until very recently New Hampshire was considered a solidly Republican state.
NFL ratings are down across the, and one-third of people surveyed says its because of the Black Lives Matter pandering. (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt.)
Another week, another bumper crop of links on Clinton corruption:
That amazing thing about the Clinton web of corruption is that there are tentacles of the Clinton Foundation you’ve likely never even heard of, including the Clinton India Foundation:
Three months after leaving the White House in 2001, former President Bill Clinton arrived in India to cheering throngs to help those who had just lost a million homes in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that killed 20,000 and injured 166,000.
In classic Clinton style, he solemnly promised that his new nonprofit — called the American India Foundation (AIF) — would rebuild 100 villages. Rajat Gupta, his millionaire co-chairman, pledged $1 billion for the victims.
It never happened. Years later, AIF’s annual reports were reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation and show only seven villages were partially rebuilt by Clinton’s group, and a mere $2.7 million of $53 million raised over a decade went to the earthquake victims.
It gets worse:
The sheer number of AIF executives who ran afoul of the law is dramatic. Clinton’s handpicked AIF co-chairmen — Rajat Gupta, then head of McKinsey & Company and Victor Menezes, then Citibank chairman — were both convicted of insider trading. Gupta served 19 months in federal prison and Menezes was fined $2.7 million.
Gupta was close to the Clintons. He hired Chelsea Clinton right out of college for a six-figure salary to work at McKinsey and he donated between $10,000 to $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Raj Rajaratnam was perhaps the most notorious AIF trustee. He was convicted of 14 counts of security fraud in one of the largest and most spectacular Wall Street prosecutions in decades. He is currently serving serving a sentence of 11 years in prison. Gupta passed on insider tips to Rajaratnam.
Then there’s Vinod Gupta, an AIF director who the Securities and Exchange Commission helped remove as CEO of InfoUSA because he used company funds to support a lavish lifestyle. He was forced to resign and pay $9 million in restitution.
Vinod also bestowed large financial rewards to Clinton. He paid Bill $3.3 million and gave him 100,000 stock shares of his company without prior approval from the board of directors. Vinod allowed the Clinton family to use the company’s jet, also without board approval. The Clintons got $900,000 worth of air travel. And Vinod gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Vinod had spent a night in the White House Lincoln bedroom when the Clintons opened it up to donors.
Sant Singh Chatwal, another AIF trustee, pleaded guilty in 2014 to funneling more than $180,000 in illegal contributions to candidates for federal office, including Hillary. The Times of India reported the close relationship Chatwal had with the Clintons.
“Chatwal and his wife Daman were regular visitors to the White House during the Clinton presidency. A fortnight after the Clintons left for their new home in Chappaqua, New York, Sant Singh Chatwal and his elder son, Vikram, dropped in to meet them,” the newspaper wrote.
Naveen Jain, an AIF trustee, was accused of buying and selling stocks with insider knowledge as CEO of InfoSpace. He eventually paid $107 million in a civil suit over insider trading.
Ajay Shah, another trustee was forced to pay $14.8 million for contributing to the collapse of the Trust Bank of Kenya. He fled the country to avoid the Kenya High Court decree.
Sudesh K. Arora, president of Natel, entered the criminal plea for a major Department of Defense fraud investigation. He settled and his company paid a $1 million fine.
A new batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department offered fresh evidence Wednesday of the pains Clinton’s staff took to accommodate her husband’s paid speeches and her family’s foundation — just hours after Sen. Tim Kaine dismissed the possibility that the Clinton Foundation had wielded influence over his running mate.
Emails showed Clinton’s aides teamed up with the foundation to perform donor maintenance, craft messaging on key policies and put together guest lists for both diplomatic and philanthropic events. State Department staffers were often asked to advise Clinton’s husband on how to handle politically-fraught speaking engagements or foundation events, such as an effort to bring the new Libyan president to a Clinton Global Initiative meeting that was held less than two weeks after the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
The trove of roughly 200 pages of records made public Wednesday was just the latest and most convincing indication that, rather than operate as an independent organization, the Clinton Foundation leaned heavily on the State Department to expand its global reach.
But the four-star rating had hardly been announced before the Associated Press reported that Charity Navigator was a member of the CGI from 2012 to 2014. The CGI is one of the Clinton Foundation’s best-known programs, as it regularly convenes glittering gatherings of celebrities, government officials and philanthropic stars.
The $20,000 CGI membership fee was waived for Charity Navigator, which reported it as an in-kind contribution, according to the AP. The news organization said Charity Navigator chairman Michael Thatcher claimed his group joined CGI “to mingle with world leaders and promote its ratings.
Photograph evidence suggest that Hillary Clinton suffers from permanent double vision. On the bright side, that means she’s probably not a shape-shifting reptoid. Probably. (Hat tip: Dircetor Blue.)
Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday.
Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public — in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said.
The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee fired off a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking why the DOJ and FBI agreed to the restrictive terms, including that the FBI would destroy the laptops after finishing the search.
Has such an immunity deal ever been offered to a non-Clinton associate in the history of the Republic?
Another Friday, another LinkSwarm. On a personal note, I am once again looking for a Senior Technical Writing position in the greater Austin area. If you have any leads in that direction, please let me know.
Republicans cave on everything and leave town. But somehow it’s Trump that’s going to sully the spotless reputation of the Grand Old Party…
But at least congress overrode Obama’s veto of bill allowing 9/11 survivors to sue the Saudis 97-1. One wonders why Obama even bothered vetoing the bill, given how he had already stabbed the Saudis in the back with the Iran deal.
Apparently, some in this party really do think they’re going to hand the election to Hillary, and, bizarrely, they think this will bully the rest of us into knuckling under to their agenda in 2020.
Rather than simply getting payback and tanking their candidate in return.
This party is on the verge of self-destructing. The upper class of the party is upset that the lower class has finally had its say, and they’re determined that should never be permitted to happen again.
Why then would anyone of the lower class ever vote for the GOP again? Are they required to sign a piece of paper confirming that they are Lessers who should know their place in order to have the privilege of voting against their own interests?
He’s also turns his fire on #NeverTrump:
we have a hundred people who claim to be #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary but, strangely enough, never talk about the downsides of a Hillary presidency. Oh, they’ll talk up how much of an authoritarian Trump is, but not Hillary’s sense of entitlement, grievance, vengeance, and her own history of authoritarianism and lawlessness in covering up her crimes.
They talk all day about “Principles,” but discard the most basic principles — such as keeping a proven lawbreaker out of the White House, or just honestly admitting which candidate they’re actually supporting to their readers — as convenience may recommend.
In fact, right now they’re howling about Ted Cruz’ “calculations” in endorsing Trump, while not admitting their own pose of “Being Against Both Equally” is in fact a completely contrived lie they’ve calculated will permit them to agitate for their candidate (Hillary) while not compromising their career prospects within Conservatism, Inc. too much.
How much can I agitate for Hillary while still retaining plausible deniability?
How much can I agitate for Hillary to appease my anti-Trump donors while still keeping enough pro-Trump readers that my anti-Trump donors will feel they’re getting enough eyeballs per dollar of their patronage?
The party — not just the party;the writers who are supposed to have telling the truth as their first mission, but instead of become nonstop liars all the time decrying Trump as a liar himself — has declared war on all of the Lessers beneath their station, those not in The Media and who should, therefore, not have quite as much of a say in things as they themselves have.
They’ve made themselves into exactly what they pretend to oppose — and exactly what I do in fact oppose.
Canada launches prescription smack. Part of me wants to see how the experiment turns out. And part of me wants to start offering junkies one-way bus tickets to the Great (China) White North.
There’s a proper and an improper way to turn down an orgy. Proper: “No thank you.” Improper: Getting stabby. Don’t they teach kids basic manners these days?
Her ostensible reason for leaving is health issues, stemming from a serious car crash she suffered in 2013. (“State Rep. Ruth McClendon-Jones, D-San Antonio, said Dukes is resting at home now after being hospitalized for several hours after the incident. She said Dukes’ vehicle was rear-ended by a large truck while stuck in traffic.” While it does sound serious, I do note that “serious injuries” from a car crash usually require more than “a few hours” in the hospital.)
Former staff members accused Dukes of seeking reimbursement from the state for travel payments she was not entitled to. In February, The Texas Tribune reported that the state auditor’s office was investigating her use of state workers on a personal project Dukes oversaw, the African American Heritage Festival. The auditors referred the case to Travis County prosecutors.
Then, in April, state officials said the Texas Rangers had joined the Travis County District Attorney’s office criminal probe. A spokesman for the Rangers, Tom Vinger, said Monday their investigation is complete and has been presented to the Travis County District Attorney’s office.
“In her resignation statement, [Dukes] said she was ‘content that two signature community programs I initiated enriched my beloved District 46 and Austin community.’ It does sound like there was some sort of enrichment going on.
While Dukes is stepping down and has been absent from the legislature for more than a year, her name will still be on the ballot in November, which means that Gov. Greg Abbott will have to call a special election next year unless Republican challenger Gabriel Nila beats her in November. Which may be difficult, as the district is so heavily Democratic. If he loses, at least three Democrats (Austin Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, Joe Deshotel (son of state Rep. Joe Deshotel), and Travis County Democratic Party Chairman Vincent Harding) have said they’re considering running.
FBI immunity for Clinton aides that aren’t testifying against her, David Brock laundering money and taking a cut, Hillary’s mysterious ailment: Welcome to another week in Clinton Corruption!
40% of Hillary Clinton State Department board appointees were Clinton Foundation donors. What are the odds?
Clinton toady and Media Matters head David Brock is a one-man money laundering machine. He has 14 pro-Clinton groups, and every time he moves money between them, he rakes off a cut for himself. It’s like his own little mini-Clinton Foundation.
Liberals scream at Jimmy Fallon for acting like Jimmy Fallon with Donald Trump. But you know who originally dared Jimmy Fallon to touch Trump’s hair? Hillary Clinton. “Watch the old video. You may be startled at how vibrant and energetic she was back then.”
Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event. If she continues with a light campaign schedule, you should assume my observation is valid, and she wasn’t at 100%.
Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage. That would be true if she also looked healthy in general, and her campaign schedule from here on out is full. We’ll know more this week, based on her schedule.
Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. I’m already hearing on Twitter that mentioning a woman’s smile is sexist. I understand the point. But when someone goes full Joker-face and tests the uncanny valley hypothesis at the same time, that’s a bit different from telling a woman to “smile more.” My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.
Remember how Trump’s unpopularity was going to sink GOP Senate candidates? Yeah, not so much.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debated last night. I watched about as much as I could stand, which was about ten minutes. So instead of my reactions, here are those of people who watched it all he way through:
Interesting: Most conservative pundits were down on Trump’s performance, but most polls show he won the debate. “It isn’t just Drudge and Breitbart; Trump also got more votes than Clinton in instant polls at Time, Slate, Variety and other liberal outlets.”
Althouse: “Hillary Clinton’s unchallenged, illogical statement about private prisons.” Also on the debate itself: “Overall, I’ll just say that was very unpleasant and I’m glad it’s over.”
Now from the Twitters:
The debate was lousy. The candidates were lousy. The moderator was lousy. I'll discuss tonight.
Viewers are eager to hear the two candidates debate substantive policy issues on—
Yeah, right. People are tuning in to see if Hillary collapses on stage or if Trump manages to say something stupidly outrageous (our outrageously stupid) even by Trump standards.