Hillary admitted to hospital over 'blood clot' issues - do I owe her an apology? Possibly, but I doubt it - my cynicism regarding this administration has risen to such dizzy heights that I take absolutely nothing they say or do at face value. Nothing. It is possible that the concussion story was floated in order to hide some other more worrisome ailment related to 'blood clots' that might pose a threat to her future political aspirations - I'll allow for that possibility - but I still doubt it if only because of the extremely convenient timing - but aside from the timing this blood clot story is just as full of seeming holes as the concussion story - she was diagnosed without having gone to a hospital? Not likely, not at all - a blood clot is only discoverable through tests that need to be administered in a hospital - and then I'm supposed to believe she was diagnosed with a clot two weeks ago and only now is being treated for it? Ah... sorry, not buying it. Suppose this makes me sound like a horribly insensitive person, but, regardless, none of this stuff rings true in any way whatsoever to my ear.
Now, understand, whatever little game Hillary is up to here is certainly a story in and of itself - but it's the corruption it is a manifestation of that is the big story - sure, it'd be nice if she'd testify and maybe the curtain then gets peeled back a bit on the whole Benghazi mess and maybe a lurid light then falls on the awful, misguided jumble of misdirection that is Obama's foreign policy - but real point of all this is that only happens if the press and media report on such in an honest, objective and thoroughly investigative way and they've made it clear that's not gonna happen - which makes that the big story here and, needless to say, a story that will also not be covered for obvious reasons.
As we see with the bogus fiscal cliff negotiations, that charade that has turned into a faux debate on taxing the rich as if taxes on the putative, arbitrarily assigned rich had anything to do with our problems - I believe everything Obama does is predicated on his firm faith that the opinion makers in the country will do what he wants them to do, will more or less fall in line behind the message he wants put out there - sure, there may be some minor push back on the margins of this dynamic - but Obama wanted this debate to be about taxing the rich because as always his main if not sole interest here is a political win driven by ideology and accordingly that's the narrative that gets played - I suppose you can fault republicans for not having a sound strategy in response - but that's why I advised them not to engage in negotiations at all with the man in the first place - if the media is not gonna behave like an objective arbiter of opinion and the result of that is a 'rigged game' that strongly favors the president, it's hard to beat that, not impossible but certainly difficult, and especially difficult if one lacks the attributes required to make the media work for you - and needless to say current GOP congressional leadership lacks those skills.
In short, what we see in the age of Obama, is that media bias has almost entirely hollowed out the whole notion of open and substantive public debate and I have trouble seeing how a democracy survives something like that, or at the very least manages to avoid a serious breakdown at some point because of it. There's a reason the first amendment is about freedom of speech - you don't get a viable democracy without it - and when opinion makers have chosen to chain themselves to a specific ideological agenda regardless of objective, countervailing 'facts', haven't they in a significant sense stepped away from the whole point of free speech?
[but what if my whole fixation on this Hillary story was based on the assumption that there's absolutely no way she'd receive such incompetent medical supervision re how to respond to a possible concussion and yet in fact that is indeed what happened? Well... I guess I'd have to change my storyline... but, no, that just is not possible, no way she suffered a concussion and the orders were not get ye to a hospital for tests - just not possible - and yet news reports are suggesting that is indeed what happened - but I'm sorry, I just can't believe it, there's no way that would happen - no way - I mean a mediocre intern who scraped through medical school knows you suffer a head injury you should probably have tests done to make sure there's no swelling or bleeding in the brain, especially if you're a 65 year old woman who may be the next president of the US - I mean, c'mon - this story is just so, I dunno, odd - although, even if it turns out she really did suffer a concussion it doesn't really change my point here, that being what the hell does the American press think it's doing when it comes to Obama? - I mean, questions should have been asked, obvious questions like, for starters, what's standard medical procedure when an older person suffers a significant head injury - but the questions weren't asked and the only reason for that that I can think of is the press like me thought the timing of the 'illness' looked way too convenient andfelt it incumbent upon them to therefore run cover for Obama, which apparently means running cover for Hillary too - that in no way is a good thing and you're delusional out of your fucking mind crazy if you can't see that]
[addendum: to put this annoying thing to bed, it does indeed appear that H has a blood clot or something along those lines; it is not at all clear that she ever had a concussion or if the clot may be sourced to such a trauma; the blood clot was discovered during a checkup related to assumed concussion, which would have to happen in hospital, which no one heard about, which means she indeed could have had a secret visit to the hospital in the first place, which means the whole reason I thought the story an obvious lie may have been completely off base - but who knows since other than the blood clot the whole episode is shrouded in shadows - it's not impossible that there was no fall, no concussion, and the blood clot was a pre-existing condition that by mere coincidence became symptomatic right now - or it could be they are related, there was a fall, a concussion, there were hospital visits that were kept secret - whatever, I'm moving on since my whole point all along was simply that a VIP suffering a head trauma would almost certainly have to be hospitalized for testing purposes - that didn't seem to happen - which made the 'illness' look highly suspicious given she was supposed to testify on Benghazi and now will never testify on Benghazi - the press was not asking the obvious questions about hospitalization because they thought the illness was bogus too - that was my whole point, and it's still a valid point - that I may have calumniated H unfairly is unfortunate - but I made it clear all along that my main focus here was the behavior of the press - certainly if Condi Rice had 'taken ill' under similar circumstances there would have been no end to speculation on what was really going on in the pages of the Times et al]
