BloggeRhythms

Several items today, each in its own way illustrating that the upcoming presidential race, and politics in general are continually adjusting. Also confirming that it’s far too soon to reach any conclusions regarding how thing will stand in November 2016 for either major political party's candidates.

Yesterday Fox News’s Chris Stirewalt wrote that: “Bush, who has a net favorability rating of negative 33 points, has made personal attacks a hallmark of late. He first attacked Trump, who is the ne plus ultra of character attackers. But Bush has most recently been attacking the character of his onetime protégé, Rubio.

Bush’s attacks on Trump have sometimes been issue-based, but with Rubio, Bush attacks his younger rival as unfit and unready for office, comparing him to President Obama. 

In this case, notwithstanding how things turn out for Jeb Bush regarding his own presidential aspirations, as far as these two issues go, on Trump and Rubio’s unfitness for the office of POTUS, he’s absolutely right about both of them. 

Adding to yesterday’s premise that polling has become totally inaccurate, and therefore, irrelevant, foxnews.com reports: “Kentucky adds its name to the list of unpredicted Republican victories in between the last two election cycles, drawing many questions about how polling keeps getting things so wrong.  Pollsters in the Bluegrass state apparently did not expect the 17 percent turnout surge from 2011’s gubernatorial race in Kentucky, just as they did not expect Larry Hogan’s shocking upset last year in the Maryland’s governor’s race. Looks like the persistent challenges of polling, or perhaps the wrong assumption of the pollsters."

Additionally, WaPo.com reports that: “Republicans held onto the Virginia Senate in fiercely contested elections Tuesday, leaving Gov. Terry McAuliffe without legislative leverage or political momentum as he works to deliver Virginia for his friend and ally Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. The outcome was a blunt rebuke to McAuliffe (D), who had barnstormed the state with 24 events over the past four days and who portrayed the elections as a make-or-break moment for his progressive agenda.”

 

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife, who a couple of days ago said she wants the federal minimum wage boosted by almost 70 percent. 

According to Reuters: “U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday in Iowa: "I want to raise the federal minimum wage to $12, and encourage other communities to go even higher," Clinton told a campaign event in Coralville.

At another campaign stop at Grinnell College, she opined that: “I think we can manage it, and I don’t think there should be any unintended consequences to job creation." 

At the same time, Davenport Iowa aldermen approved an economic incentive package for Kraft Heinz, as the food giant plans to build a new, $203 million facility in the city. 

The new plant will be a proposed state-of-the-art facility in the Eastern Iowa Industrial Center. According to council documents, the facility would "allow for the retention of at least 475 full time positions," which is only about a third of the nearly 1,400 current Davenport jobs. 

And if that isn’t enough, yesterday Kraft Heinz also announced plans to close seven facilities, including one in Madison, Wisconsin. The company expects to reduce the amount of jobs in the country by about 2,600. 

What’s even more ironic is that while Bill’s wife was proving in speeches that she knows less than nothing about how the U.S. economy functions, the company slashing jobs to save money is the one that Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, is heir to.

At least Clinton's husband Bill understood he knew nothing about economic policy either. Which is why he left Republican Alan Greenspan in charge of the Federal Reserve to grow the economy for him and turn it into a complete success.

Aside from her absolute lack of understanding of a major issue, employment and how it works, Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote an article yesterday for foxnews.com, further disclosing Bill’s wife’s responsibilities for the Benghazi tragedy.  

The judge wrote: “In 2011, when President Obama persuaded NATO to enact and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, he sent American intelligence agents on the ground. Since they were not military and were not shooting at Libyan government forces, he could plausibly argue that he had not put “boots” on the ground. Clinton, however, decided that she could accelerate the departure of the Libyan strongman, Col. Muammar  Qaddafi, by arming some of the Libyan rebel groups that were attempting to oppose him and thus helping them to shoot at government forces.

“So, in violation of federal law and the U.N. arms embargo on Libya she authorized the shipment of American arms to Qatar, knowing they’d be passed off to Libyan rebels, some of whom were Al Qaeda, a few of whom killed Ambassador Stevens using American-made weapons. When asked about this, she said she knew nothing of it. The emails underlying this are in the public domain. Clinton not only knew of the arms-to-Libyan-rebels deal, she authored and authorized it. She lied about this under oath.”

Then the judge added: “My Fox News colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne have scrutinized Clinton’s testimony with respect to her friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal. Recall that President Obama vetoed Clinton’s wish to hire him as her State Department senior adviser. So she had the Clinton Foundation pay him a greater salary than the State Department would have, and he became her silent de facto advisor. 

“They emailed each other hundreds of times during her tenure. He provided intelligence to her, which he obtained from a security company on the ground in Libya in which he had a financial interest. He advised her on how to present herself to the media. He even advocated the parameters of the Libyan no-fly zone and she acted upon his recommendations. Yet she told the committee he was “just a friend.” She was highly deceptive and criminally misleading about this under oath. 

“It is difficult to believe that the federal prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Clinton will not recommend that she be indicted. Inexplicably, she seems to have forgotten that they were monitoring what she said under oath to the Benghazi committee. By lying under oath, and by misleading Congress, she gave that team additional areas to investigate and on which to recommend indictments."

In conclusion, considering that the judge is a highly experienced, reasonable individual, who’s very well aware of the law and its applications, his summation isn’t simply political propaganda. It’s far more likely that his analysis is accurate. Here’s what he wrote: “When those recommendations are made known, no ballot will bear her name.”

Which leads to the ongoing question: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you reading this?   

That’s it for today folks. 

Adios