Blogger Bob is taking a fall break. Will resume "PolitiQuips" in a week or 10 days.

The Obama administration became unwittingly transparent with the discovery of an email sent by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service field office chief urging that as many new "citizen voters" as possible be sworn in before Nov. 8 "due to the election year." President Obama obviously wants to do everything he can to sway the election for Democrat Hillary Clinton to preserve his legacy.

The State Department funneled more than $9 million in sole-source contracts to a nonprofit headed by the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, and he bragged about it. "What we're talking about here is a multi-million dollar effort that will strengthen the capacity of health care workers to deliver lifesaving HIV services," Kerry said at a World AIDS Day event in 2014.

The Dallas Morning News learned the price it had to pay for its endorsement of Hillary Clinton when readers flooded the newspaper with angry phone calls and subscription cancellations. She is the first Democrat the paper has endorsed in 75 years.

Just call her "Marvel." That's the Secret Service code name for Ivanka Trump. The 34-year-old daughter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been added to his security protection list. Trump's code name is "Mogul" and his wife, Melania's is "Muse."

"This is actually just a war of narratives." White House press secretary Josh Earnest made that policy statement about the war against ISIS and it was quickly echoed by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Tell that to those victims who were wounded by the Islamic jihadist terrorist in Minnesota and the shrapnel from the bombs in New York and New Jersey.

How Your Taxes Are Spent
Regulations imposed by the Obama administration cost taxpayers $348 billion in just one state. That's the claim by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said that amount resulted from 25 regulations affecting or directed at Arizona during President Obama's two terms in the White House.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which set the rules for the encounters between the major contenders beginning Monday, September 26, is supposed to be non-partisan. But that contention comes under question when it's revealed that all of the campaign contributions made by commission members have gone to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

While Islamic terrorists claimed responsibility for at least one of the flurry of attacks on U.S. citizens over the weekend, President Obama joked about the ISIS (or ISIL, as he prefers) group. At a Congressional Black Caucus dinner Obama cracked that nothing "weighed on my mind like the validity of my birth certificate" - not even two bombing attacks in New Jersey and New York.

"Although she had to be lifted into that van ... she kept fighting." - Democratic National Committee interim chairperson Donna Brazile, referring to Hillary Clinton's collapse at the 9/11 observance in New York. Combined with her campaign's hiding the fact that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, Brazile's weak statement does little to inspire confidence in the Democratic presidential candidate's health condition.

Former President Bill Clinton isn't the only one in the family whose brain doesn't seem to be working right. He told CBS Hillary Clinton's near-fainting spell at the 9/11 observance in New York wasn't the first of its kind. He said such incidents had occurred "frequently" - then quickly did a 180-degree turnaround and changed that to "rarely." Later in another interview, he referred to Hillary's pneumonia diagnosis as "a case of the flu."

Hillary's hubby may be doing more harm than good as a surrogate. On "The Daily Show" he inadvertently admitted the family's nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, is involved in politics. "It has to be totally out of politics" if his wife becomes president, he said.

Donald Trump allowed the suspense to build about the revived "birther" issue while Hillary Clinton made it her main talking point, then punctured her balloon with a short flat statement that Barack Obama "was born in the United States, period.

President Obama was supposed to be touting the virtues of Hillary Clinton when he campaigned for the ailing Democratic presidential nominee at a Philadelphia rally. But his ego got the best of him. He talked mostly about himself, using the personal pronoun 137 times.

"Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up." - Colin Powell, in one of his leaked emails, complaining to a friend how Hillary Clinton had cost him a speaking "gig" by charging a university an exorbitant fee.

Here's an alarming statistic. Dluring the 92 months of the Obama administration, the federal government has collected more than $20 trillion in taxes. But during that same period the federal debt rose to $19 trillion - an increase of $8.8 trillion.

Candidate collapses -- campaign to follow?

"Hillary Clinton's health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign" - Washington Post

Clinton Camp 'could have done better' disclosing pneumonia" - MSNBC.com

"Hillary Clinton's pneumonia jolts the presidential race" - The Wall Street Journal

"Clinton cancels California trip in aftermath of illness - Los Angeles Times

It's not just Hillary Clinton who has a memory problem. Vice President Joe Biden drew a blank on her running mate in a speech in Pittsburgh. Appearing at a rally for organized labor with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., he said "I work for Hillary Clinton, and whatever the hell this guy's name is."

Gary Johnson didn't forget. He just plain didn't know. The Libertarian candidate for president, at a foreign policy forum, was asked what he would do, if elected, about Aleppo. "And what is Aleppo?" he replied. Johnson had to be informed the place in Syria is the epicenter of the refugee crisis.

President Obama's name has been given to a parasite and retired biology professor Thomas Platt says it's an honor, not an insult. Baracktrema obamai is a tiny parasitic flatworm that lives in turtles' blood. It is a two-inch-long, hair-thin creature. No, it doesn't have large ears.

Hillary Clinton has two kinds of "hacking" problems: her emails and her coughing fits.

The Democratic nominee for president caved in to pressure to be questioned by news reporters, meeting with the traveling press on her campaign plane. She gave answers like this to a question about the Clinton Foundation: "Doesn't matter how many times you ask me or how you ask me, these issues will be decided after the election."

No, Greta Van Susteren hasn't had a sex change. The veteran Fox News personality was suddenly replaced by Brit Hume after 14 years with the network. Maybe the Fox bosses needed her salary to help pay the $20 million settlement to Gretchen Carlson, who accused former Fox head Roger Ailes of sexual harassment.

It's customary to roll out the red carpet when a head of state visits a foreign country. But leave it to the inscrutable Chinese. When President Obama arrived in China for the G20 summit, the stairs weren't ready for him to walk out so he had to exit Air Force One via a back door.

What does it take to become a laughing stock? Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine is on his way if he keeps defending Hillary Clinton's refusal to hold a press conference for more than 274 days. "You see Hillary take questions from reporters every day. She talks to the press everywhere she goes," he told CBS. When that clip was played during a later appearance on CNN, a panel of reporters burst out laughing.

On this Labor Day, government employees in the U.S. outnumber manufacturing employees by almost 10 million. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports federal, state and local government employed 22,213,000 in August, while the manufacturing sector employed 12,281,000. That's disturbing.

Looks like Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin were running a full service operation from the State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Newly released emails indicate some foundation donors lobbied Clinton's top aide Abedin for diplomatic passports. And no, they weren't diplomats.

Paul Manafort stepped down as Donald Trump's campaign chairman after information surfaced that he once had been employed by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a pro-Russian organization. Now it is learned that John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, has ties to the same group. The Podesta Group, a top Washington lobbying firm now run by his brother, Tony, also represented the firm through an account with the Saudi government.

Misguided environmentalists are going overboard in Florida. They got more than 100 political candidates to sign a petition opposing fracking. But here's the thing: there is no fracking in Florida. The state has the wrong kind of geology for it.