It looks like big banks and corporations agreed to donate to the Democrats a certain percentage of the allocated TARP funds.

Source: Guccifer 2.0 Hacked Clinton Foundation. It looks like big banks and corporations agreed to donate to the Democrats a certain percentage of the allocated TARP funds.

The total link site for the news and information junkie: Libertarianism. Property Rights. Government Corruption. Chicago Mob. Struggle Against Socialism. Union Corruption. Pension Meltdown. Blacked Out History. New York Mob. Higher Education rip-offs. Housing Crash. Rent-seeking. Obama-Chicago Democratic Machine. Gun Control Monopolists. The Ron Paul Revolution. Organized Crime…Other Politically Incorrect matters of interest.

Source: Instapundit Glenn Reynolds on his Twitter Suspension, Online Free Speech, & His Presidential Vote

In fact, he’s a former president with a wife who is going for the same golden crown.

Still Crazy After All These Years

An ObamaCare October surprise.

By James Taranto

Five weeks before the presidential election, a campaign surrogate is declaring war on ObamaCare, as the Washington Times reports.

“You’ve got this crazy system where all o f a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” the surrogate said in Flint, Mich., Monday. “It’s the craziest thing in the world.” Also: “The people that are getting killed in this deal are small businesspeople and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.”

Having said all this, why aren’t Donald Trump ahead by 50 points? you might ask. Maybe because the quote above doesn’t come from one of Trump’s surrogates but from one of Hillary Clinton’s—and not just any surrogate but Bill Clinton, to whom Mrs. Clinton is officially married.

It’s something of an October surprise, and Mr. Clinton isn’t the only unlikely critic of ObamaCare to emerge in recent days. In yesterday’s New York Times, reporter Robert Pear described ObamaCare as a failure while studiously avoiding the F-word: “[President] Obama’s signature domestic achievement will almost certainly have to change to survive.”

Since ObamaCare is not a living organism, the “survival” metaphor obscures more than it illuminates. Just how much change could the law take and still be deemed to have “survived,” as opposed to having been replaced by a new scheme? We’re not sure how to answer that other than purely subjectively. There are more maddening metaphors, too:

Dr. John W. Rowe, who was the chief executive of Aetna from 2000 to 2006 and the president of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York before that, predicted that “the insurance market will stabilize in two or three years.”

“We are not in a death spiral,” Dr. Rowe said. “If this were a patient, I would say that he’s not in intensive care, but he’s still in the hospital and requires careful monitoring.”

But that does not mean the act will heal on its own, said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. . . . .

For the rest of the column, follow the link .. .

Neck and neck

The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows Clinton with 42% support and Trump with 41%. . . . .

Yesterday, it was Clinton 43%, Trump 40%. Factoring in our +/- 2.5 margin of error, both candidates continue to hover around the 40% mark as they have for weeks now, looking for a breakaway moment to put some distance between them and their opponent.

Some saw Clinton’s debate performance as that moment, and it did move her slightly ahead after trailing by five points the week before.

But the race appears to be tightening again.Eighty-three percent (83%) of voters now say they are certain how they will vote, and Clinton has a statistically insignificant 48% to 47% lead among this group.

Among the voters who still may change their minds, it’s Trump 31%, Clinton 27%, Johnson 32% and Stein 10%.

Source: White House Watch – Rasmussen Reports™

Sen. Don Harmon, Rep. Camille Lilly in Galewood, Sept. 12, 2013: Citizens speak out.

Obamacare?

A woman said her health insurance was rising yearly. The premium had doubled.

Lilly: “That’s why ACA [Obamacare] is coming.”

“No, that’s the problem,” the woman said, taking Lilly aback. “I’m getting hit over and over . . .”

Lilly interrupted. “Pain is critical. It can be good.”

Harmon took the mike, commiserating with the questioner. “I feel for you,” he said. Then, picking up on Lilly’s argument, he sounded his own frugal note: “But we can’t afford your free health care for life.”

He had been the sympathizer, feeling others’ pain. Now he was the grim realist, talking about what “we” cannot afford. If he should expand on that, he would find himself before long on the dark (Republican) side.

Taxes:

Turning to the populist, Harmon  noted that he had been chief sponsor of a 67-percent income tax increase — from 3 percent to 5 percent — no longer calling it a 2-percent increase. You want taxes? We got taxes.

“It’s not on the right people!” the populist shot back.

Harmon defended himself further: “I am [also] chief sponsor of a fair income tax.” Progressive.

The state of Illinois:

More frustration. A man in the back asked angrily, “Are you listening? So much is going on in state politics, constantly.” Applause followed. “We’re paying you . . . It’s embarrassing . . . awful.”

Lilly, again taking offense: “I have heard every single word since I have been honored to be a state legislator. God gave me this opportunity. I have learned so much . . .” She advanced, mike held close, raising her voice, intoning mantra-like, “This great state . . .” She was shouting now. Hands were raised all over the room.

Pervasive uneasiness:

“It’s discouraging,” said Harmon, as if to concede the sad state of things, if not his and Lilly’s being accused of not listening. “What have we not heard?” he asked.

The man was possessed of an uneasiness which he seemed unable to identify, possibly from a sense of impotence in the face of the political process — the pervasive Chicago sense that the fix is in, one’s vote does not matter, etc., helped not at all by the seeming insouciance of these two samples of the people’s choice, the one downplaying the “crisis,” the other defending herself stridently.

It’s a “great” state, Lilly kept saying, to people who didn’t think so or thought it beside the point.

General frustration:

“We need fresh blood,” said someone else. Appointed and since then electorally opposed only once, when House Speaker Michael Madigan poured money into her cause, Lilly was a case in point. It was hopeless to complain as she pranced and danced, half the time barely making sense, the other half taking offense and being offensive.

“We suffer while you guys do nothing,” the angry man said.

“What are we not hearing?” Harmon asked again, unwilling to concede the problem lest he concede too much, seeking a concrete point or issue around which he could weave counterpoints and ancillary issues, something he could debate.

But he was being attacked, even condemned as so much a part of the problem, it made no sense to be specific. “There’s so much . . .” the man said, trailing off.

More to come, from Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters— available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.

So much for Miss Piggy:

Clinton was expected to put some space between her and Trump in the polls after what many considered a strong performance in the first presidential debate of the general election, and Trump’s highly criticized remarks about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, but that has not happened.

Key here is “highly criticized,” it seems to me. Highly criticized by whom? Major media, whose influence not an issue in this case. Consoling that.

Her universe expanded.

“When Alicia Machado of Venezuela was named Miss Universe nine months ago, no one could accuse her of being the size of the universe,” wrote legendary CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos. “But as her universe expanded, so did she, putting on nearly 60 pounds.”

via CNN hypocrisy? Flashback to when network fat shamed Miss Universe Alicia Machado | Fox News

On whom else did he rat? Does the Times have something on him?

The three pages of documents, which included nonresident tax returns from New Jersey and Connecticut, were confirmed as legitimate by a certified public accountant who prepared Trump’s taxes until 1996.

Or is it all bets off in this campaign, as NYT man called for on front page of that newspaper?

Trump lost big in ’90s, got pass on later Fed taxes, reports the Democrat-Times, Hillary’s campaign is tickled pink.

[Trump’s] campaign vehemently pushed back on the Clinton campaign’s effort to turn the report into an “October surprise” moment, saying Trump has a “fiduciary responsibility” as a businessman to pay no more tax than legally required. It also charged that the report proved that the Times and the “establishment media” are merely an arm of the Clinton campaign.

Brace yourselves, everybody, there’s more to come. Trouble is, the Hillary bombshells have been public for so long, we are used to them. And what a deal for her to have the FBI director part of her extended team through his longtime affiliation with Lockheed Martin.

Forgiven.