Category: Presidential Campaign

Elizabeth Warren Is Not Going to Make an Endorsement in the Primaries, but This Comes Close

No Comments

The distinguished Gentlewoman from Massachusetts just cut Lloyd Blankfein a new asshole over his whining about Bernie Sanders criticizing him:

Elizabeth Warren entered the intensifying battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, defending Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from a new attack by the head of Goldman Sachs — a Wall Street behemoth whose executives have delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton, her presidential campaign and her family’s foundation.

In an interview with International Business Times hours before Wednesday night’s Democratic town hall in New Hampshire, the Massachusetts senator — whose endorsement is coveted by both Democratic candidates — slammed Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein for asserting earlier in the day that Sanders’ criticism of Wall Street had created a dangerous environment in America.

“He thinks it’s fine to prosecute small business owners, it’s fine to go hard after individuals who have no real resources, but don’t criticize companies like Goldman Sachs and their very, very important CEO — that’s what he’s really saying,” Warren told IBT.

In January, Sanders pointed to billionaire Blankfein as a prime example of the corporate greed he says is harming the United States. Sanders also released a television ad in which he slammed Goldman Sachs by name, and he has criticized Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, for accepting $675,000 of speaking fees and $930,000 of campaign contributions from the firm and its executives during her career. Goldman Sachs has donated at least $250,000 to her family’s foundation — which in 2014 held a donor meeting at the company’s Manhattan headquarters.

Blankfein responded to Sanders’ criticism on Wednesday in an appearance on CNBC, saying the intensity of the criticism created an environment that “has the potential to be a dangerous moment — not just for Wall Street, not just for the people who are particularly targeted, but for anybody who is a little bit out of line.”

Warren, a Democrat, disputed that notion in harsh terms, telling IBT that such statements show why American voters should focus on Wall Street’s power during the 2016 election.

“When Blankfein says that criticizing those who break the rules is dangerous to the economy, then he’s just repeating another variation of ‘too big to fail,’ ‘too big to jail,’ ‘too big even to prosecute,’” she said. “That tells you here we are, seven years after the crisis and these guys still don’t get it. Seven years. That crisis cost an estimated $14 trillion, it cost jobs, it cost homes, it cost retirement funds. And Lloyd Blankfein stands up and says ‘Don’t even criticize me, I ran a company that was right at the heart of some of the biggest financial frauds in history and made money off it, but don’t you dare criticize me.’ That’s his position? That’s why we need voters to get really engaged.”

This isn’t an endorsement as such, but it is a pretty clear indication that she has his back.

Told Ya So

No Comments

Yesterday, I suggested that we wait a couple of days to see what the final vote tally in Iowa.

Today, we hear that votes are still trickling in:

Votes from one precinct in Iowa were still missing Tuesday morning, and Democrats from that neighborhood scrambled to find party officials so that they could report their tally: Bernie Sanders won by 2 delegates over Hillary Clinton.

With Des Moines precinct No. 42’s results, Clinton’s excruciatingly close lead narrowed further, making the final tally for delegate equivalents in the Democratic Iowa caucuses:

Clinton: 699.57

Sanders: 697.77.

It quickly raised questions about whether Sanders had won the popular vote in Iowa. Sanders backers called for Iowa Democratic Party officials to release the raw vote totals.

This is what happens in very close elections, and it won’t be fully resolved until well after New Hampshire votes.

Of Course He Handled Losing Graciously. He’s Gone Bankrupt 3 4 Times. He Knows How to Do This.

No Comments

Donald Trump gave a remarkably magnanimous in acknowledging his 2nd place finish in Iowa:

Donald Trump, who no one thought was a viable candidate for President just 6 short months ago, managed to come in a solid second place in today’s Iowa caucuses. For some, the fact that he didn’t come in first was shocking, for other’s, it was a relief.

Throughout the entire election season thus far, Trump has been the voice of xenophobic hate talk, blathering about building walls, deporting immigrants, ridiculing disabled reporters and offending pretty much everyone except white Americans. The fact that he was poised to come in first in Iowa terrified many. Although, having Tea Party favorite, Ted Cruz, come in first may actually be more terrible in the long run.

Regardless, Trump took his narrow loss with grace and gave a fairly humble and short speech.

It’s almost classy.

Bullsh%$ Bingo Winner of the Day

No Comments

There is a mildly amusing parody web site that does a compare and contrast of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, things like:

  • Bernie: Star Wars is a great series, and I thought that episode 7 is a nice return to the Franchise’s roots,
  • Hillary: [Makes “Live long and prosper” hand signal]

It’s kind of silly, and not too deep, and pokes fun at Hillary Clinton’s perceived lack of authenticity,* but someone at Salon decided to use the meme to attack all Bernie Sanders supporters as male chauvinists, aka Bernie Bros:

………These jabs at Clinton’s imagined sonic preferences reinforce the tired idea that the tastes of non-cis-male cultural consumers—from teenagers on through boomers and beyond—are something to be mocked and disrespected.………

Don’t even bother trying.

Annie Zaleski has won the bullsh%$ bingo game for this month, and possibly for the entire f%$#ing presidential campaign.

She has her head so far up her ass that she resembles a Klein bottle.

*Not her fault.   Bill Clinton does authenticity so well that if he were sharing a bill with Pope Frank, the Pontiff would look like the Andy Kaufman character Tony Clifton.

Iowa Caucuses

No Comments

And tomorrow is Groundhog day, so expect the same crap from the pundits, day, after day, after day, after day

In terms of the actual numbers, as of 11:50 PM EST, with 98% of Republican caucuses reporting, a Ted Cruz has won the Republican caucuses, with Trump second, and Rubio a fairly close third.

Clearly, Rubio is not the (lame and not particularly intelligent) great white hope of the Republican establishment.

With 94% of Democratic caucuses reporting, it looks like the delegate talley will be pretty close, as Hillary Clintonhas 49.9%  and  has Bernie Sanders 49.6%, with O’Malley at ½%.

The race has not been called, and there are reports that O’Malley has dropped out of the race.

The Democratic caucus results seems to indicate that very little bit has been settled.

I would guess that the results will be the same in the morning, but given that the reporting software is written by Microsoft, I would wait about 48 hours for the final count.*

Ongoing results here.

*I am not suggesting fraud here, I am suggesting incompetence and poor execution, kind of like Windows Vista, Windows 8, Office 2007, and Microsoft Bob.

Interesting Factoid about Sanders

No Comments

When you take a look at at previous “insurgent” challengers, they tended to get a lot of support from more affluent Democrats.

Not for Sanders:

Sanders’s strength with voters making less than $50,000 a year  —  and his relative lack of appeal among voters making above $100,000  —  sets him apart from Democratic primary challengers in years past like Bill Bradley, Howard Dean, and Barack Obama. All these “progressive” underdogs attracted their strongest support from wealthier voters, while struggling, in relative terms, to win lower-income support. (Nate Cohn notices the same trend in today’s New York Times.) 

Also this:

Bernie Sanders’s coalition once looked very familiar: He had strong support among well-educated and affluent liberal white voters of the sort who backed Barack Obama, Bill Bradley and Jerry Brown. He struggled among less affluent voters.

But his coalition has evolved over the last few months. He now fares much better among less affluent whites than Mr. Obama did eight years ago, suggesting he’s attracting a group that traditionally supports more moderate establishment candidates, someone like Hillary Clinton. If confirmed in the voting, it would vindicate his hope of building a progressive coalition based more on class than the coalitions put together by liberal predecessors.

I’m not surprised that the Democratic establishment hates Sanders.

There is an saying, “Republicans fear their base, and Democrats hate their base.”

To the degree that Sanders talks to the base, and talks about the existential issues surrounding excessive (and undeserved) inequality in our society.

He is talking directly to the base, and they hate him.

It should make interesting time in South Carolina.

Lunchtime Thought on the Iowa Caucuses

No Comments

I think that Hillary is likely to win, even though I think that most of O’Malley’s support will end up in the Sanders camp, (O’Malley is also running a liberal populist campaign, like Sanders) because anyone who gets less than 15% in a caucus has to move to another candidate.

I think that it is going to be close though.

I think that Clinton has to win this, because if she loses it, then Sanders will clearly win in New Hampshire, and then South Carolina becomes iffy for Clinton, and Sanders is likely to run the table.

On the other hand, if Sanders loses, he still is likely to win in New Hampshire, particularly with the just announced debate on Thursday, which will be intensely watched by likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters.

Sanders is, I think, less effected by the results, because his campaign was intended as an issue campaign, and remains that at its core, and could return to that with a minor adjustment.

With his large base of small donors, and a low burn rate, he can run throughout the primaries.

In either case, I do not expect O’Malley to continue his campaign beyond the March. He’s just not getting any traction.

Posted via mobile.

Hillary Clinton is Scared, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Loses

No Comments

It appears that the DNC is reversing itself, and there will be more debates:

After days of jostling over whether to meet for more debates, and how many, aides to Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders have reached an agreement, of sorts, they said Saturday: The two will meet next week in New Hampshire and will hold three more debates thereafter.

 A Clinton aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss continuing negotiations, confirmed the tentative agreement for four additional debates, which was first reported by BuzzFeed.

 The two campaigns have engaged in a measure of brinkmanship in recent days, with Mr. Sanders’s team one-upping Mrs. Clinton’s by saying it would agree to an additional debate in New Hampshire if her team agreed to more beyond that.

 Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said the agreement was still being discussed. “I’m optimistic,” he said, but he added, “The details are still being worked out.”

 The Democratic National Committee has yet to weigh in on whether it would sanction the added debates.

 The New Hampshire debate next week was originally scheduled as an unsanctioned one, sponsored by MSNBC and the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper. But a Democratic National Committee official said The Union Leader would not be a sponsor.

 Still, it would mean a highly watched showdown between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders before the Feb. 9 primary in New Hampshire.

 After working in 2015 to restrict the number of debates, Mrs. Clinton’s team has since expressed regret about that as Mr. Sanders surged in the polls, especially because she has generally delivered strong performances in the debates.

I don’t know who wins in this arrangement.

Clinton is clearly more comfortable debating, but the more that people see of Sanders, the more that they like him. (OK, this is a win for O’Malley, because he has nothing to lose in the debates, and everything to gain)

I can tell you who loses, however, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the incompetent and widely loathed head of the DNC, who had been steadfast in resisting debates after scheduling a pittance on weekends up against things like NFL playoff games.

Trump: 1 — Fox News: 0

No Comments

I think that Donald Trump’s beef with Megyn Kelly is stupid, and his promised boycott of the next debate because she will be a moderator is more about tactics than any real sense of offense.

It’s a win-win for Donald.

He is clearly would be the one on stage with the most to lose, and by standing up to Fox, he reinforces the image that he wishes to cultivate: That he is beholden to no one, because he is dissing what is arguably the kingmaker of Republican Presidential politics:

Instead of attending the debate, “We’ll have an event here in Iowa, with potentially another network, to raise money for wounded warriors,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said. “And Fox will go from probably having 24 million viewers to about 2 million.”

The fracas escalated quickly on Tuesday, but was the culmination of months of tension between the GOP frontrunner and the Fox News host Megyn Kelly.

………

 Trump’s apparent decision changes the dynamic for Thursday’s event, which is the last GOP debate before the all-important Iowa caucuses.

 Without Trump, Ted Cruz will take center stage. Cruz also challenged Trump to go mano a mano.

………

 The disagreement came to a head on Tuesday afternoon. Around 1 p.m. Trump polled his fans on Twitter, asking, “Should I do the GOP debate?”

 The poll suggested a real reluctance to attend, perhaps because Trump, as the frontrunner, arguably has the most to lose on Thursday night. The respondents were evenly split, with about half saying he should skip it.

 In an Instagram video that coincided with his poll, Trump said, “Megyn Kelly’s really biased against me. She knows that, I know that, everybody knows that. Do you really think she can be fair at a debate?”

The other winner here is Ms. Kelly, a phony journalist who can use this incident to better pretend that she is a real journalist.

My prediction* is that Trump wins Iowa and New Hampshire, and the then runs the table to become the Republican nominee.

I need to update my f%$#ing passport.

*With the obvious caveat that Saroff electoral predictions have frequently been very, very wrong.

Headline of the Day

No Comments

Michael Bloomberg decides to hold a gun to the head of American democracy

It’a an interesting, and probably accurate assessment, that Bloomberg is making an implicit threat to the Democratic Party: That if Sanders wins the nomination, then he will queer the general in favor of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz:

According to this morning’s New York Times, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided that there are not enough billionaires trying to sway the outcome of the next presidential election: “If Republicans were to nominate Mr. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a hard-line conservative, and Democrats were to pick Mr. Sanders, Mr. Bloomberg—who changed his party affiliation to independent in 2007—has told allies he would be likely to run.”

………

Bloomberg’s intent is clear: He’s considering running not because he has a viable program he wants to promote, but because he wants to exercise a veto over the already existing parties—especially a veto over whom the Democrats pick. His gambit makes Sanders’s path to the White House much more difficult but also explains why Sanders’s campaign is necessary.

Yet another Wall Street narcissist throwing a tantrum.

Vote Sanders, and tell Michael Bloomberg to go Cheney himself.

Well, Isn’t That Special

No Comments

In response to a request for transcripts of her extremely well remunerated speeches to Goldman Sach is a dismissive laugh:

After Hillary Clinton spoke at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday, I asked her if she would release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. She laughed and turned away.

Clinton has recently been on the defensive about the speaking fees she and her husband have collected. Those fees total over $125 million since 2001.

Her rival Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, has raised concerns in particular over the $675,000 she made from Goldman Sachs, an investment bank that has regularly used its influence with government officials to win favorable policies

………

During one of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, Clinton reportedly reassured the crowd and told them that banker-bashing was unproductive and foolish, according to a Politico report based on accounts offered by several attendees.

………

When asked by the Des Moines Register on Thursday if she regretted her decision to make money from speaking to various interest groups, Clinton compared herself to President Barack Obama, noting that significant campaign donations from Wall Street did not stop him from passing the Dodd-Frank reform law.

But the Obama administration did in fact go easy on Wall Street by refusing to criminally prosecute the major financial institutions responsible for the 2008 economic crisis. And Dodd-Frank, many critics say, does not go far enough in preventing systemic risk.

Clinton does not want a transcript of that speech released.

It is almost certainly something that she does not want to see the light of day, because it almost certainly a declaration of common cause with the banksters.

I rather do hope that someone recorded a cell phone video of her speech.

Why Hillary Clinton’s Stint as Secretary of State Is Not a Positive

No Comments

Her tenure at State was categorized by mindlessly bellicose rhetoric, and not a whole bunch of major accomplishments.

One of the best examples of this, though it started a few months after Clinton left Foggy Bottom, was the negotiations to open up with Cuba, where the Obama administration had to keep the State Department in the Dark to prevent it from sabotaging negotiations.

It wasn’t Clinton’s direct doings, but it was her people that the Obama administration had to deceive.

The most compelling case on a personal level is how Clinton’s mindlessly bellicose statements  kept US citizens prisoners, detained, and abused in Iran:

I rarely think about being a prisoner in Iran anymore. I’ve been free for more than four years. It’s been a long time since the sounds of hard soles on a cement floor would remind me of my interrogator or I would suddenly need to bolt from a restaurant because I couldn’t take the throngs of people after so much time in a prison cell.

Last Saturday, I was dripping coffee on myself during an early morning drive when I heard that four Americans were being released from Iran as part of a prisoner swap. Suddenly, my eyes welled up. I could feel the knot of excitement and confusion that had turned in my gut when my plane from Tehran hit the tarmac in Muscat, Oman, in September 2011. I pictured the way my and my friend Josh’s families looked small in the distance, their little hands waving, as we taxied toward them. I remembered the force that pulled me—running!—down the stairs of the airplane and how, at the bottom, I laughed and cried at the same time. Everyone else did too.

I was elated for these men and their families.

Later, the joy was tempered by an old, familiar frustration. While scouring the internet for updates on the four Americans, I read that shortly after their release, Hillary Clinton called for new sanctions on Iran for testing two ballistic missiles last year. I was shocked. The prisoners had not yet been let out of the country. Why would she provoke Iran when their freedom was still on the line?

The Omani envoy trying to negotiate our release was repeatedly frustrated by Clinton. “Why can’t your Hillary just keep quiet?” he blurted to me.

I remembered sitting in my cell in 2009—I think I was trying to memorize a family tree from Greek mythology or something equally random—when I heard then-Secretary of State Clinton’s voice from a television in a neighboring cell. I ran to the door and pressed my ear into its little window. She was commanding Iran to release us immediately. My heart sank. I imagined my interrogator bringing me into his padded room, blindfolded, and ranting about how Iran would not be bossed around by America, “The Great Satan.” I came to fear the sound of Clinton’s voice. Whenever I heard her publicly slam Iran about something, I would mentally prepare for at least another couple of months in prison.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Many of our family members grew frustrated with their meetings with her and White House officials. My wife, Sarah, who was released a year before Josh and I were, shared this frustration. Once, during a meeting with us in the prison, Swiss Ambassador Livia Leu, who represented American interests in Iran, broke from her usual reassuring demeanor and said, “They will never respond to your government demanding they release you. They need to talk to the Iranians.”

The title of this article, “When I was a prisoner in Iran, I came to fear the sound of Hillary Clinton’s voice,” pretty much says it all.

Clinton’s mindless dick swinging in foreign policy (Yes, I intend the juxtaposition) is not an indication of foreign policy knowledge, it is an indication of her determined and unwavering foreign policy ignorance.

She gives Dick Cheney a run for his money in the incompetence in the foreign policy arena.

Lose

No Comments

At the last kiddie table debate, Rick “A Frothy Mixture” Santorum suggested that debate watchers Google him:

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum encouraged viewers to Google him in Thursday’s undercard Republican presidential debate, an unfortunate choice of words that reminded many of his search engine woes fueled by sex columnist Dan Savage.

“Go and Google Rick Santorum and Hillary Clinton you’ll see a five-minute debate. I’ll let you decide who won the debate,” he said during his closing statement. “I’ll tell you who won, I know I’m out of time, I’m going to take some of Rand Paul’s time here for a second.”

The prompt recalled sex columnist Dan Savage’s retribution campaign against Santorum for his anti-gay remarks, when Savage asked readers to come up with an alternate definition for “santorum.” A highly NSFW entry rose to the top and has for years plagued top search engine results for Santorum’s name across sites.

If you Google “Santorum”, you will find multiple references to, “The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex,” a neologism coined by Dan Savage in the late 2003.

If you are Rick Santorum, you should NEVER ask people to Google you.

How Utterly Proper

No Comments

This really shouldn’t be a surprise.

Palin has been feeling persecuted by the Republican establishment since 2009 or so, and unlike Ted Cruz, Trump does know how to be charming when he wants to close a deal, so there is a twisted internal logic to her endorsement of Donald Trump:

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee who became a Tea Party sensation and a favorite of grass-roots conservatives, endorsed Donald J. Trump in Iowa on Tuesday, providing him with a potentially significant boost just 13 days before the state’s caucuses.

 “Are you ready for the leader to make America great again?” Mrs. Palin said with Mr. Trump by her side at a rally at Iowa State University. “Are you ready to stump for Trump? I’m here to support the next president of the United States — Donald Trump.”

 Her support is the highest-profile backing for a Republican so far. It came the same day that Iowa’s Republican governor, Terry Branstad, said he hoped that Senator Ted Cruz would be defeated in Iowa. The Feb. 1 caucuses are a must-win for the Texas senator, who is running neck-and-neck with Mr. Trump in state polls.

 The endorsement came as Mr. Trump was bearing down in the state, holding multiple campaign events and raising expectations about his performance in the nation’s first nominating contest.

 As Mrs. Palin announced her backing, Mr. Trump stood wearing a satisfied smile as she scolded mainstream Republicans as sellouts and praised how Mr. Trump had shaken up the party. “He’s been going rogue left and right,” Mrs. Palin said of Mr. Trump, using one of her signature phrases. “That’s why he’s doing so well. He’s been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system.”

In literally related news, the son of Alaska’s mom of the year, “Track Palin, Got Drunk And Beated Up A Lady With His Gun, Allegedly.”

What a busy day for the Palin family! Sarah’s in Iowa making drunk faces about Makin’ America Great Again for Donald Trump, Bristol’s sitting at home COVERED in out-of-wedlock baby poo and “writing” internet letters about what a dick Ted Cruz is and OH LOL GUESS WHAT, Track Palin had to go to court, because he was arrested Monday night for beating up a lady, interfering with a domestic violence report, and also too brandishing a weapon while intoxicated.

Put in more Regular American talk, Track Palin was arrested for being a common drunk-brawlin’ Palin.

Allegedly.

Whoa if true, though, and we hope she’s OK. Here’s your press release from the Wasilla po-po’s office:

On 01/18/2016 at approximately 2204 hours, Wasilla Police responded to a residence for a disturbance. An investigation revealed Track Palin had committed a domestic violence assault on a female, interfered with her ability to report a crime of domestic violence, and possessed a firearm while intoxicated. Palin was arrested and charges of assault in the fourth degree (domestic violence), interfering with a domestic violence report, and misconduct involving weapons in the fourth degree were forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office. Palin was held without bail until arraignment.

UH-OH! We are so shocked by this behavior, young man.

As the saying says, “First as tragedy, then as farce”.

I believe that this farce is called “The Wasilla Hillbillies.”

My Take on the Democratic Debates

No Comments

I missed the first 20 minutes, so this effects my review of the debate.

My two big take-aways are that but this debate was far more combative than any of the prior encounters, and that the debate moderators were trying very hard to completely ignore Martin O’Malley.

In terms of performance, I think that Clinton is a more accomplished debater, but that Sanders challenged her honesty, which is, and remains a weak point with the voters.

I’m not sure how this is going to pay out.

My guess is that the press will declare it a Cinton victory.

but I do want to say that the decision by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to schedule this debate opposite the NFL playoffs, much like her decision to schedule an earlier debate on the Saturday before Christmas.

DWS really needs to be fired.

Well, This is Getting Interesting

No Comments

David Brock, a proxy for Hillary Clinton has been demanding that the 74 year old Bernie Sanders release his complete medical records.

Interestingly, the Clinton campaign has done its level best to get him to STFU:

A top surrogate for Hillary Clinton is prepping a new attack in an intensifying and increasingly personal war against rival Bernie Sanders — calling on the 74-year-old to release his medical records before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1.

Clinton defender David Brock — founder of the Correct the Record PAC, which coordinates directly with Clinton’s campaign — is expected to hit the airwaves this weekend from Charleston, the scene of the third Democratic debate on Sunday night, and challenge Sanders to cough up a clean bill of health and doctor’s note in the next 16 days, according to a Democrat familiar with his thinking who was not authorized to preview any strategy.

Clinton released her medical records, showing she is “fit to serve as President,” last July. A spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign declined to comment on the strategy.

But hours later, after this report was published and Brock’s planned tactics were widely criticized on Twitter, campaign chairman John Podesta distanced himself from the surrogate’s attack.

“@DavidBrockDC chill out,” Podesta tweeted Saturday night. “We’re fighting on who would make a better President, not on who has a better Physical Fitness Test.”

Podesta’s belated comment also came after the Sanders campaign issued its own fundraising plea off of this report, calling it “a new, vile super PAC attack on Bernie.”

I don’t think that it was a fundraising plea.

I think that the Clinton campaign does not want a detailed investigation of her health records.  (She is 68)

Here is the analysis from Naked Capitalism: (note that Coumadin is a brand name for the generic Wafarin)

……… People in glass houses should not throw stones! Hillary’s medical report reads as if it was written by lawyer, and it’s from an MD in the town next to Chappaqua, when you have to think her and Bill’s main doctors are big ticket MDs in Manhattan, and the local just part of the team. But most important, she’s on Coumadin, which is an anti-clotting drug used often in post stroke patients to reduce the risk of recurrence. Coumadin has to be tightly managed. And read this analysis….be sure to get as far as the discussion of the cumulative odds of death were she to be a 2 term president on Coumadin. Are there any doctors in the house who can weigh in on the article? Update: This came in by e-mail from a doctor who treats in this area that I asked to opine:

Clinton apparently had a rare type of stroke, cerebral venous thrombosis. For what it’s worth, I had never seen a patient with that kind of stroke in my career. In the blog post, Dr Cundiff analyzed the fairly minimal data available on that kind of stroke. One study showed a surprisingly high bleeding risk for patients on long-term Coumadin. But the study was apparently funded by the manufacturer of a drug that was brought out to be a supposedly safer alternative to Coumadin, the COIs affecting the study were not properly disclosed, and the design of the study was such that the likelihood it was biased is high.

And of course it’s actually very difficult to accurately predict what will happen to any patient, much less at a distance using limited information for a patient who had a relatively rare problem.

All patients on Coumadin (and other kinds of anticoagulants) have elevated bleeding risks. How elevated it may be difficult to say for many. Really good medical care and monitoring ought to decrease this risk. Falling and hitting one’s head, or having major trauma surely increase it. So I would advise Ms Clinton, from a distance, to avoid contact sports and activities with high risks of trauma (sky-diving, race car driving, working for the police, fire departments, going into military combat, etc). But that’s probably not so useful in this context.

All of this is significant because I guarantee that the Republican opposition researchers are looking to use all of this against the eventual Democratic nominee.

Whether it’s Clinton or Sanders (O’Malley is really not in the game), we are going to see health issues raised by Republican operatives.

Oh, Snap!

No Comments

Roll Tape!

One of the issues that seems to be giving the Bernie Sanders campaign its legs is the perception that Hillary Clinton is too close to the Banksters on Wall Street.

This 2007 video of Hillary Clinton giving a speech before banksters blaming ordinary people for the mortgage crisis is not going to help her campaign:

When Clinton ran for president during her second term as New York’s U.S. Senator, she gave a tepid speech at the NASDAQ headquarters on December 5, 2007 — before the financial crisis reached a boiling point — about reforming Wall Street’s housing loan practices, largely excusing financial criminals for their behavior.

“Now these economic problems are certainly not all Wall Street’s fault – not by a long shot,” Clinton said early in the speech.

Clinton’s NASDAQ address amounted to essentially asking the financiers assembled to take voluntary action or else she would “consider legislation” to stop banks from kicking families out of their homes. But early on in the speech, Clinton placed equal blame for the subprime mortgage crisis on low-income homeowners alongside Wall Street.

“Homebuyers who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known they were getting in over their heads,” Clinton said.

One YouTube user found video of the statement and put it side-by-side with her claim at the first Democratic debate in which she said she went to Wall Street before the crisis and told them to “cut it out.”

This sort of crap is like death to her campaing, because it plays into her greatest weakness, a perceived lack of authenticity.

She is firmly in the Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner,  Barack Obama wing of the Democratic Party.

Trying to pretend that she is more of a populist than Bernie Sanders is laughable.