BloggeRhythms

Today’s another where Trump has scored significant gains by the actions of others, while potentially losing ground due to his own extremely poor decisions and choices. Thus, while his adversary is continually handing him ammunition to be used against, due to the major faults of herself and those around her, Trump immediately does something purely foolish and self-defeating, regardless.

In Trump’s case, he’s now believed by many to have placed Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie at, or near, the top of his vice presidential possibility list. Which means he has two well connected political animals under consideration, closely tied to “insiders” in the DC establishment. However, neither are particularly well thought of by the voting public across the rest of the nation. Gingrich is by now pretty much a tired old self-serving slug, while Jersey’s Christie is viewed as almost as much a fast-talking New Yorker as Trump is.   

On the growing list of Bill Clinton’s wife negativity, another faux pas of odorous happenings occurred when Bill himself just “happened to be” in a Phoenix airport when Attorney General Loretta Lynch was arriving shortly for another reason entirely.  

Among many others, Rush felt a few too many things lined up for the meeting to be a spontaneous social call.  

Whereas Lynch is overseeing an investigation into his wife’s private email server, Rush finds it odd that, “[Bill] Clinton just happens to be told that Loretta Lynch is arriving soon when he just happens to be arriving to depart at Sky Harbor International Airport?” 

Rush asked his radio show audience yesterday: “[W]e are supposed to believe here that Bill Clinton, a 70-year-old man with a history of heart trouble, played golf in Phoenix where it was 108, 110 degrees?”

Not buying Lynch’s recanting of the meeting as accidental, Rush "feels the discussion — which the radio personality believes was intended to be clandestine — involved Bill Clinton blackmailing Lynch, telling her to drop the email issue all together.” 

While Trump, not surprisingly, criticized the impromptu meeting, many others agree with him.

Even David Axelrod, former chief strategist to President Barack Obama, said, while he trusts the meeting was “primarily social,” as the attorney general said, the conversation was “foolish.” 

Indicating that the meetings backlash is having growing effect, today FoxNews.com reports: “Under bipartisan fire following a private meeting with former President Clinton even as her Justice Department investigates Hillary Clinton over her secret email server, Attorney General Loretta Lynch will announce on Friday that she will defer to career prosecutors and the FBI on whether to bring charges against the former first lady and likely Democratic presidential nominee.”

In other damaging news for Democrats, Teresa Welsh @mcclatchydc.com, reports: “The number of people enrolled in coverage through President Barack Obama’s health care law this year decreased to 11.1 million by the end of March, down from 12.7 million by the January deadline. 

“The Obama administration released new enrollment numbers Thursday that showed the number of people who signed up by January 31 exceeded those who were covered in the spring. A dropoff in enrollment has happened before, and is partially caused by people who sign up for coverage by the deadline but then lose it because they do not pay their premiums."

A major reason for the program’s unpopularity was illustrated by Ali Meyer @freebeacon.com, who wrote today: “Claims for Obamacare enrollees were nearly double the cost of average medical claims for individual non-qualified health plan enrollees, according to a report from the Mercatus Center. 

The report evaluated 174 insurers that offered qualified health plans for both individual and small group markets in 2014, finding that “the cost of enrollees in individual qualified health plans were 93 percent higher than enrollees in individual non-qualified health plans. 

“Individual market [qualified health plan] enrollees incurred nearly $5,000 in average medical claims in 2014—93 percent more than the roughly $2,600 in average medical claims incurred by people enrolled in individual market non-[qualified health plans],” explained Brian Blase, one of the co-authors of the report. 

“The substantial medical claims paid by individual market [qualified health plans] resulted in large losses despite insurers taking in premium income, largely consisting of government subsidy payments, of about $1,400 more per enrollee for their individual market [qualified health plans] than for their individual non-[qualified health plan],” he said. 

Reading the horrendously poor results of the program to date led to some research which showed that back on 11/10/2014, Jeffrey Young wrote @huffingtonpost.com: “HHS estimates that the population potentially eligible to use a health insurance exchange to buy private coverage is 23 million to 27 million people, including 15 million uninsured who qualify for subsidized private coverage and 8 million to 12 million who now buy plans directly from an insurer or through an agent or broker. Subsidies are only available via an exchange, and 85 percent of this year’s enrollees received the financial assistance. 

“Federal officials think that 83 percent of the 7.1 million currently covered by insurance purchased on an exchange, or 5.9 million individuals, will still be covered by insurance purchased on an exchange by the end of next year, based on information from surveys, state-run exchanges and one unnamed insurance company, which show a range of 70 percent to 90 percent retain this type of insurance over the course of a year.” 

Which means that while signing up only 47.8% of the potential market it intended to serve at the outset, except for the most needy and dependent on governmental help at taxpayer's expense, just about everybody else either drops out after signing or doesn’t even apply in the first place.  

Bringing us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.

A new ABC News analysis of CMAG/Kantar Media data shows: “When it comes to television advertising, Hillary Clinton is blowing Donald Trump out of the water.”

“Clinton and her allies have outspent Trump forces by more than $20 million in June on television advertising. “For every $1 that Trump and his allies spent on television in June, Clinton and her allies spent $12. The presumptive Democratic nominee and her main super PAC, which can raise unlimited funds, doled out about $23 million during the month of June. 

“Almost 9 in every 10 dollars spent on television in June were spent boosting Clinton’s campaign. Six in 10 dollars came from Priorities USA Action, the Clinton-backing super PAC, with another quarter of spending coming from Clinton’s campaign itself.” 

On the other side: “Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, has spent no money on television advertising, while unofficial super PACs backing his bid spent less than $2 million. 

“The lack of advertising spending isn’t a change in strategy for the real estate mogul -- his bare-bones primary campaign relied heavily on dominating news coverage, but spending little money on advertising or staff.” 

Reading the financial statistics regarding advertising spending, brought back memories of a major corporation this writer spent major time and funds with to develop a marketing program designed to offer services to the corporation’s sales force. Upon the program’s introduction I was told how much senior management was looking forward to outstandingly positive results, mentioning only one caveat which was: “However, all bets are off if the dogs don’t eat the food.”     

Applying that logic to the Clinton/Trump spending comparison to date for advertising leads back to yesterday’s entry here which said: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Trump with 43% of the vote, while Clinton earns 39%. Twelve percent (12%) still like another candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.” 

Thus, it doesn’t really matter who spent what or where in the presidential campaign to date, whereas, despite all the dollars pumped out to promote Bill’s wife, it seems that the dogs just ain’t likin’ the food she’s selling. 

Which brings up the ongoing question again: Joe Biden, Jerry Brown, and Starbucks chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz; are  you guys reading this?  

That’s it for today folks.     

Adios