Politics suddenly becomes a feeding frenzy

I'm sure you've noticed the magical disappearing act performed on almost every version of video clips of Hillary Clinton collapsing at the 9/11 commemoration.  Take the headline on the Drudge Report as I write these words, for example:

I saw that same headline earlier, when it showed a video clip from YouTube of Hillary's fall.  That clip has since been deleted, leading to the spectacle above.  Someone - presumably working for the Hillary Clinton campaign - was scurrying around yesterday, trying to take down every single copy of the video that surfaced anywhere.  It's a shameful reflection on several video hosting services that they permitted themselves to be manipulated like that.  As for the campaign, did they really think that thousands of copies of the video hadn't been downloaded within a few hours?  As soon as one was taken down, two more were re-posted.  A simple YouTube search reveals dozens of copies.  I daresay Matt Drudge will update his headline with one of them in due course . . . provided Hillary isn't knocked out of the headlines by some other, more interesting development.

What's more interesting is the shocked reaction in the press, which had almost universally covered up the Hillary health question until now.  I was cynically amused at this reversal of direction by a Washington Post correspondent (hat-tip to Bloviating Zeppelin for the image):

That's only one example of the suddenly heightened interest in Hillary's health.  I'm sure she'll try to evade questions about it, but I suspect she's not going to be allowed to do so any longer - at least, I sincerely hope not.  For example, her campaign claimed yesterday that she'd been diagnosed with pneumonia.  That did her no favors, because there's already well-informed speculation that she suffers from Parkinson's disease - and some forms of pneumonia are associated with that illness.  Let's see whether the media runs with that, and asks the difficult questions that really need to be asked . . . or whether journalists and editors once again try to cover things up for their favored politician.

Karl Denninger went so far as to state bluntly, 'Hillary is done'.

The fact is that Hillary lost the election today, and it was lost irretrievably.

Hillary has displayed several instances of behavior previously that called her medical status into question, but she and her campaign have dismissed them as part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.  The coughing fits, the twitchy behavior that looks suspiciously like a petit mal seizure and more all have led people to ask very-valid questions, especially given her known medical history and previous physical issues.  The response has been typical Clinton: Talk to the hand.

But this event came on a pleasant early-fall day, not a blistering-hot mid-summer noontime event.  New York was "suffering" under low-80s temperatures, humidity well under 50% and a pleasant, roughly 10 mph breeze, the stifling heatwave previously over the northeast having broken.  In other words, exactly the sort of day on which you'd take your young child to the zoo or stroll along the lakefront, river, or ocean without a care in the world.  There were thousands upon thousands of people at the service and nobody was falling over from heatstroke.  The collapse itself was caught on high-resolution video, everyone has picked it up including AP and it clearly shows Hillary literally collapsing into someone's arms and being dragged, feet behind her, into the van to spirit her out of there.

There's more at the link.

Scott Adams seems to agree with Karl Denninger.

If humans were rational creatures, the time and place of Clinton’s “overheating” wouldn’t matter at all. But when it comes to American psychology, there is no more powerful symbol of terrorism and fear than 9-11 . When a would-be Commander-in-Chief withers – literally – in front of our most emotional reminder of an attack on the homeland, we feel unsafe. And safety is our first priority.

Hillary Clinton just became unelectable.

The mainstream media might not interpret today’s events as a big deal. After all, it was only a little episode of overheating. And they will continue covering the play-by-play action until election day. But unless Trump actually does shoot someone on 5th Avenue, he’s running unopposed.

Again, more at the link.

I'm not so sure that Hillary's done yet - she's lied, twisted and evaded her way out of many crises before - but she did herself no favors by so arrogantly ignoring the real concerns surrounding her health.  Those concerns are now manifesting themselves in ever more outrageous conspiracy theories, as well as (sometimes conflicting) diagnoses and prognoses.  Well, she asked for it, and now she's getting it.

She also asked for it with her comment that half of Donald Trump's supporters were 'a basket of deplorables'.  Challenge accepted!  Amazon.com already boasts literally dozens of T-shirts proudly proclaiming the wearer to be a member of that basket, or expressing related sentiments.  My personal favorite:

I'm not in the Trump camp - I remain an independent - but I'm very tempted to buy one, just because!




Peter