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Sunday, September 11, 2016

Hillary's Health

Some people are concerned that Hillary Clinton isn't particularly healthy. For example, she apparently fainted today during a 9/11 ceremony.

I'm not concerned at all. In fact, if you guaranteed me that she was so unhealthy that she would die shortly after taking office, I would vote for her in a heartbeat. Kaine may not be my first choice for president, but I prefer him to either Clinton or Trump. By a lot.

Is that a politically incorrect thing to say? Oops, sorry! :-)

26 comments:

Hey Skipper said...

The NYT's coverage of her episode carried the claim by a Clinton spokesman that "she had overheated."

Yet did not spend a single syllable on the actual weather. High day -- low 80s. Humidity -- 50%.

I guess that was news not fit to print.

Hey Skipper said...

.Recently, I suggested that the NYT has abandoned any pretense of journalistic integrity. Here is the last but one para from the NYTs coverage of Hillary!'s "episode":

The candidate's husband, Bill Clinton,however has said she "required six months of very serious work to get over" the concussion -- a statement that helped feed conspiracy theories among Republicans that the injury was worse than initially disclosed, though there was no medical evidence to support those theories.

It would take quite awhile to unpack that abuses in that one sentence.

Hey Skipper said...

The Washington Post has also bemerded itself.

Clovis said...

LOL.

Never heard that word before, Skipper ("bemerded"), but I couldn't stop laughing. What an interesting conjunction of Latin and English...

Hey Skipper said...

From a source almost as reliable as Restating the Obvious:

A 68-year-old woman, with pneumonia, still kept a schedule that most of us wouldn’t make it through, flying here and there, holding multiple events and briefings a day.

That’s not weak. That’s actually strong and tough as hell.


I've had pneumonia a couple times.

The first time happened when a) I was convinced that the sole purpose of flight docs was to ground pilots.

So I sucked it up and pressed.

The second time happened when a) I was convinced that the sole purpose of flight docs was to ground pilots; and b) due to it being Desert Storm and all, I couldn't hide my condition from the flight docs. On account of they were as thick in the squadron as indictments should be on Hillary!

(Here's a grammar question, which probably only erp can answer: If a proper noun ends in a punctuation mark, is another punctuation mark required to properly end the sentence?)

In the first case, I lied. And, in retrospect, that was a bad decision. Was I tough as hell? No. Not even considering a work schedule, never mind the physical demands, that would leave Hillary! -- I want to say face down on the pavement, but now that seems tasteless, so please help me end this sentence ...

In the second case, I continued working 20 hour days.

FFS, please stop it with the sycophancy. Grow a brain. Learn to use it.

Hey Skipper said...

Oh, and one other thing.

Having been a pneumonia sufferer, the last thing I would associate with pneumonia is Hillary's! (dammit, does her Sheness ever make punctuation a chore) very bad no good case of the staggers.

erp said...

On account of they were as thick in the squadron as indictments should be on Hillary! Skipper, If this is the sentence in question, it is correct as it is. The entire sentence is an exclamation.

I also had pneumonia -- about 25 years ago. I couldn't raise my head for over a week and it was a good three weeks before I felt at all well. Of course, I didn't have a Dr. Feelgood to administer magic potions.

Bret, I don't share your positive opinion of Kaine and hope you will elucidate and give an old lady some hope of a happy ending. I used to work in the city not too far from Times Square and Kaine reminds me of the men we'd see slinking out of the porno movie theaters on the west side.

Hey Skipper said...

erp:

"On account of they were as thick in the squadron as indictments should be on Hillary!" Skipper, If this is the sentence in question, it is correct as it is. The entire sentence is an exclamation.

Except that it isn't. It is a statement of fact.

Now what?

Bret said...

erp,

Kaine is a pretty typical liberal.

But.

If you google "Hillary Clinton Corruption" you get 55 million hits.

If you google "Tim Kaine Corruption" you get a mere 600 thousand hits.

Kaine is still corrupt, of course, like all politicians, but he's a piker compared to Hillary.

erp said...

Skipper, that may be, but adding the ! makes it an exclamation as well.

Bret, agreed that Kaine is not a Hillary!!!! -- but is he a President of the United States of America?

Clovis said...

What's up with you guys and all this pneumonia around?

One century earlier and you wouldn't be around to tell it anymore.

Nor you guys (sadly), nor Hillary... Those antibiotics were sure a mixed blessing. Maybe that's why Libertarians place the ideal America in the XIX century. The powerful couldn't hang out for so long in order to choke freedom around.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Pray tell me, how a pilot with pneumonia works 20 hours a day in the middle of a war theater? What else were you doing if you couldn't fly?!?

Hey Skipper said...

It's a long story, so here's a very abbreviated version.

We had long made made many mistakes of not training the way we were going to fight. In this particular case, exercises never properly tasked the mission planning cell. As a result, we put the new guys on mission planning duty, because the task was relatively easy.

Except that it isn't.

So when the balloon went up (Turkey decided only three days ahead of time to allow missions to launch out of Incirlik AB), our mission planning operation looked like a study in chaos theory.

Three of the first five days in DS, and doing mission planning on the others. After the fifth day, the squadron commander decided to ground his most experienced guy -- me -- and have me put our mission planning operation on solid footing, whatever it took.

What it took was 13 twenty hour days: 1200, go to the command post to get the next day's target list. Spend the next 12 hours coordinating weapons loads, tactics, doing ballistics, making maps, working tactics with the other weapons systems (F-15 CAPs, AWACS, Tankers, Weasels, B-52s coming from England, etc). Attend mass mission briefing somewhere around 0100.

Then while the mission was being flown (about 4 hours total including ground time) reconstituting for the next day. When the mission returned, attending the debrief, work out how to be better the next day, more prep work, then in bed at 0800.

(Obviously, I'm not doing this alone. I had four dedicated enlisted specialists and another four aircrew that changed each day that worked the first 12 hours.)

Within a few days I had enough processes in place to eliminate the chaos, and started coming down with pneumonia. A week later, they had become sufficiently routine, and pretty much all the aircrew had been through at least one mission planning cycle.

At that point, the commander cut me loose from that and, whether as a reward, or in recognition that the flight doc insisted I was med down, I get sent on a five day speaking tour of Turkish air force bases with F-15, F-16, F-4G, EF-111, tanker and AWACS pilots.

The day after I got back from that, the flight doc, perhaps feeling aggressed, ungrounded me.

My experience of pneumonia sucked, but it didn't include anything remotely like the staggers.

erp said...

Skipper, they got the right man for the job of bringing order out of chaos. I wish you were available for the White House job.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Thanks for that answer. It sure includes experiences I can barely imagine.

I may have a reflexive anti-war stance, but I confess finding its logistics and tactics far too fascinating whenever I look at it.

One must feel quite accomplished when fighting for the greatest armed forces mankind ever produced.

But I wonder: did you guys, back then at Iraq, even felt any challenge upon doing it? I ask myself the same thing when I watch the US basketball team playing in the Olympics - it must be a little boring for them somehow.

Clovis said...

On this pneumonia thing.

I was 16 years old when I've got it too (yeah, maybe I wouldn't be here too but for antibiotics).

I had moved back to Curitiba, which can be a very cold experience given the absolute lack of heating at homes. Maybe it didn't help that I kept wearing jeans and tshirts over 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) rainy weather.

The cough really bothered me, but I don't remember feeling too weak or anything more debilitating than any typical cold. Maybe that's because I was quite young, but I guess I am not impressed neither with Hillary nor with Skipper's show of health. OK, I am impressed with Skipper for other reasons - I would like to work at a war room too, not to mention the flying around all those war machines - but I can't say the same for Hillary.

Hey Skipper said...

Oh, for Peter's sake.

Three of the first five days in DS, and doing mission planning on the others.

I flew three of ...

[Clovis:] I may have a reflexive anti-war stance ...

You know what, so do I.

For the first week, taking off on every mission was exactly like going to your oncologist to find out the prognosis.

Pro tip: that's not fun.

And I can't even begin to fathom what it was like for the ground guys.

... but I confess finding its logistics and tactics far too fascinating whenever I look at it.

I do too. There are very many things that are very difficult to do. They may not get the glory, but that doesn't mean they aren't as challenging as what the glory hogs get up to.

But I wonder: did you guys, back then at Iraq, even felt any challenge upon doing it?

For the first week, yes. I fully expected we'd lose a couple airplanes on each mission.

After that, it became a grind -- for operational reasons, far riskier than than peacetime ops, but it became much more a case of just getting the job done.

The mission of the airplane I flew was very fast, very low altitude attacks at night. In that environment, hitting the ground is just a little less risky than getting shot.

Weird self confession moment. For some people with a particular form of brain damage, being scared gets addictive. For those people, the decision at a much higher level than mine to get out of the low altitude arena -- because we had complete air supremacy -- was a disappointment.

Go figure.

... but I can't say the same for Hillary.

The problem -- well, OK one among many -- is that she lies even when she doesn't have to.

Based on my personal experience with pneumonia (and, a few years ago, a much more serious run in with bird flu), I simply don't buy it as an explanation for her very bad case of the staggers.

The campaign explained that as a bad case of dehydration, because "we just can't get her to drink water."

In a 2008 interview with Katy Couric, she said she drank water as if it was going to run out any second.

Since my personal experience doesn't lead to the staggers, and the whole dehydration thing is completely self contradictory, now what?

Only one conclusion. As awful as Trump is, at least he can't possibly be as thorough, and bad, a liar as Hillary!.

(BTW, erp, I disagree with you on the whole exclamation point thing here. Undoubtedly, it is HIllary!(tm). Which means the ! is really no different than the rest of the letters. Therefore, it should be Hillary!. Which looks really stupid.)

erp said...

Skipper, the exclamation point is then part of a word, not punctuation and speaking of Hillary!, I'd like to know what happened the object that fell out of her pants leg and kicked into the gutter while she was "helped" into the van? It looked very much like a catheter bag?

The reason we will be voting for Trump is not only that he doesn't have a global network of corruption ala Clinton and Co., but he will not be given the free ride by the media Hillary! routinely enjoys.

erp said...

Mystery solved.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
I fully expected we'd lose a couple airplanes on each mission.
---
Did you lose any at all?

---
The mission of the airplane I flew was very fast, very low altitude attacks at night. In that environment, hitting the ground is just a little less risky than getting shot.
---
How many years of flight experience you had before that? And how many years the most novice of the pilots had to go through before getting this kind of mission?

BTW, did you know how to flight before going to the Air Force? And how did you end up there in the first place?

Clovis said...

Erp,

From your link:

---
Hillary has to have metal clips holding a colostomy bag, and she’s campaigning. How sick is this (pardon the pun)!?
---

I sure get all the fuss over her lies (be it about her medical condition or else), but do you agree with that level of argument?

Do you really think a colostomy bag makes someone unfit to be president?

erp said...

No, I think candidates should be forthcoming about their health. Hillary is obviously suffering from serious disabling health problems and taking medications that may or may not affect decision making.

Apparently Chelsea's apartment doubles as a medical facility.

Media cover-up of these conditions can no longer be tolerated.

Bret said...

I don't think that a colostomy bag makes someone unfit to be president. I also think it's way, way, waaaaaaay, far from being conclusive that she even has one.

I just don't see a vast conspiracy holding up where Hillary is very sick and/or dying and not even one insider is bothering to blow the whistle and let the public (or even the DNC) know.

Walking pneumonia I can believe. General exhaustion I can believe (not surprising for a nearly 70 year old woman doing the grueling campaign thing). Early stage Parkinson's? Maybe.

But something that's known where she's gonna keel over or otherwise be incapacitated in the near term? Anything's possible, but I doubt it.

And if she dies in office, is it really that big of a deal?

If it is, then one has to ask if it's a great idea to elect Trump? They're both old enough that the risk of dying in office is starting to get a bit higher. For both of them, there is roughly a one in ten chance that they die while in office using the standard actuary table. They're better cared for than average but to offset that they're subject to a lot more stress than average.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Did you lose any at all?

We did have one case of battle damage from what little of the Iraqi Air Force was able to get airborne — a birdstrike.

How many years of flight experience you had before that? And how many years the most novice of the pilots had to go through before getting this kind of mission?

By that time, I had 11 years flying, and, with 2700 hours in the airplane, was the most experienced guy in the squadron. Our most junior pilot had about 200 hours in the airplane, and 15 months of various kinds of pilot training before that.

BTW, did you know how to fly before going to the Air Force? And how did you end up there in the first place?

I had essentially no flight experience before going into the Air Force. One entry requirement for pilot training for those without a pilots license was to successfully complete 25 hours of civilian flight training, and have soloed by the twelfth hour — for me, that was the sum of it.

One of my earliest memories was walking through the living room while my parents were watching a WWII John Wayne movie, Flying Leathernecks. I was captivated by a flying scene, and the hook was sunk.

I pretty much sublimated that, and, having just graduated high school, was thinking along the parentally approved lines of doctor/dentist/lawyer. One afternoon, I was surfing at San Onofre, near a Naval Air Station.

For some reason, probably on account of they could, a flight of four F-4s roared along the surf line, right over our heads.

The next day I was at the recruiting office.


Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] I just don't see a vast conspiracy holding up where Hillary is very sick and/or dying and not even one insider is bothering to blow the whistle and let the public (or even the DNC) know.


I don't see that either.

But what I do see is the actions of a pathological liar. She lies about stuff that doesn't need lying about.

Her staff said she got the staggers due to dehydration, because, for some odd reason, she practically refuses to drink enough to keep herself hydrated.

In a 2008 puffball interview with Katie Couric, she made a big deal about how much water she drank.


General exhaustion I can believe …

How grueling was her schedule over the previous month? I mean other than glad handing at ritzy fund raisers. Yeah, that is some killer grueling, right there.

Hey Skipper said...

A bimbo* beating the MSM at its own game?

* Someone, always an attractive young woman, who just might be a hell of a lot smarter than she is encouraging you to give her credit for.