So let's clear up a few things up.

First off Hillary Clinton did not get sick in a vacuum.

Courtesy of People: 

The illness that sickened Hillary Clinton with pneumonia and caused her to have to be escorted away from September 11 ceremonies in New York on Sunday also struck down several members of her campaign team at Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn, PEOPLE has learned. 

 "Everyone's been sick," a campaign source tells PEOPLE. 

At the end of August, two weeks before Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia, a debilitating bug was making the rounds among staff at her headquarters and campaign aides who travel with Clinton, a source tells PEOPLE. 

Secondly Hillary is not the first presidential candidate to campaign with pneumonia.

Courtesy of Garnet News:  

Hillary Clinton is not the only candidate to experience this illness. In 2004 John Kerry also developed “walking pneumonia.” 

From an email he wrote to the New York Times in 2008, “I remember on the bus in Iowa, my staff thought I’d broken a rib from coughing because my walking pneumonia was so bad.”

Do you remember how the press freaked out about Kerry's illness, and claimed that campaign was over and he needed to be replaced at the top of the ticket?

No you don't. And that it because John Kerry was a man, and Hillary is held to a completely different and unfair standard.

You can deny it if you want, but the evidence is overwhelming.

And speaking of different standards: 

For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished. 

Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons. 

Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails.

So was the Bush administration the focus of numerous Congressional investigations,  culminating with the former president being called to testify as to why he and his staff destroyed evidence and defied the law?

No.

Why not?

Because they are Republicans and fuck you, that's why not!

Remember Republicans do not believe in accountability unless it has to do with the Democrats. And that goes triple if their first name is "Hillary."

Sarah Palin and Donald Trump express compassion for Hillary Clinton's illness and do not see it as a political opportunity at all. Just kidding.

Not so "deranged" anymore... https://t.co/K8l5Egv6XF

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) September 12, 2016

Hillary Campaign Gives an Answer for Her Coughing Attacks and 'Medical Episode': She Has Pneumonia https://t.co/lKDZXE15Pu

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) September 12, 2016

This is more or less that point I was making yesterday about how this illness of Hillary's will be perceived by those on the Right.

Sure having pneumonia is not that big of a deal considering the kind of medical attention these candidates receive, however the real problem lies in the fact that it gives credibility to Right Wing conspiracy outlets like The Drudge Report and Alex Jones.

This suddenly moves them from the easily dismissed whack-a-doodle category and into the "investigative journalist" category, much like the National Enquirer did after breaking the John Edwards affair story.

THAT is not good for the Clinton campaign going forward as it now gives these conspiracy theory manufacturing outlets a glossy coat of integrity. Sure it will be short lived, but still there is damage to be done.

Sarah Palin's third Facebook post yesterday was a reach around to Donald Trump for "putting politics aside" yesterday in deference to 9-11.

But did he? Did he really?

Courtesy of CNBC:  

Donald Trump Trump on Clinton's health: 'It's quite sad' 2 Hours Ago | 03:11 Donald Trump told CNBC on Monday he hopes Hillary Clinton gets better and that he plans to release a detailed report on his own health this week. 

"I saw what was going on with her and I said, 'You know, I'm going to go do something and I actually took a physical last week and probably, I guess this week, will release the results of it," the Republican presidential nominee told "Squawk Box" in a telephone interview.

"It's quite sad," Trump said. "I hope she gets well soon." 

"It's interesting because they say pneumonia, but she was coughing very, very badly a week ago," the 70-year-old Trump said. "It's very interesting to see what's going on."

So you can see how deftly Trump moves from ensuring folks that he is healthy and will soon prove it, to raising questions about the authenticity of Hillary pneumonia diagnosis.

And that is the fertile ground laid out for him by Alex Jones and other truth torturers on the Right.

All Trump has to do is to oh so casually question whether Hillary is being honest about her illness, and the media, both on the right and the left, will be all over it like flies on shit.

Which may be the most apt metaphor I have ever used on this blog. 

Update: Here are some more examples of how this pneumonia admission changes the narrative:

Over 3 weeks ago I was calling on Hillary Clinton to release her health records... Some mocked me. Not so much now!https://t.co/yE8Vm4FnUp

— Eric Bolling (@ericbolling) September 12, 2016

David Axelrod: Antibiotics Won't Cure Clinton's 'Unhealthy Penchant for Privacy' https://t.co/VHYxyvUEot pic.twitter.com/vlv97odOAY

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) September 12, 2016

ILLNESS SHOWS HER FIRST INSTINCT IS TO LIE... https://t.co/POWUByVyJi

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) September 12, 2016

This of course WILL die down, everything does eventually, but in the meantime welcome to the new media obsession with Hill's health and the increased scrutiny on hoarseness, level of attentiveness, and stride while taking the stage.

The culprit behind Hillary Clinton's heat exhaustion is revealed, it was PNEUMONIA.

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

Hillary Clinton has pneumonia and has been advised to rest, the Democratic presidential nominee’s doctor said on Sunday, after Clinton abruptly left the 9/11 memorial ceremony in downtown Manhattan because, her campaign initially said, she “felt overheated”.

“Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies,” Dr Lisa R Bardack said in a statement. “On Friday, during follow up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule. “While at this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely.

There we go.

Why her campaign let her go out in that heat knowing this about her health, I have no idea. 

After all it would have been MUCH easier to deal with the optics of her not showing up to the 9-11 event then to explain away her damn near passing out from the heat.

Of course this news will do nothing to convince Donald Trump's "basket of deplorables" that she is not dealing with some candidacy ending terminal condition, but let's face it if she were to suddenly start doing back handsprings across the White House lawn they would criticize her technique and claim that she was hopped up on Amphetamines.

And we might as well be prepared to see that video of Hillary stumbling into that SUV over and over again during the next two months, and likely long after that.

So from this point forward Hillary needs to demonstrate health, strength, and endurance during every single appearance she makes until the day she takes the oath of office.

Because we simply cannot allow that racist orange asshole to win this election.

Anti-vaxxer mom has a change of mind, but not soon enough to prevent her seven children from catching the Whooping cough.

Courtesy of the CBC:  

An Ottawa mother of seven "defected" from the anti-vaccination movement, but then her youngest — a 10-month-old son — contracted whooping cough before she could get all of her children their shots. 

Tara Hills told CBC News that since all her children, aged 10 and under, were showing symptoms of the contagious disease, they have been advised to take antibiotics and stay inside their Kanata home for five days. 

Her first three children were partially vaccinated, she said. But she decided to stop after the fourth was born because she was suspicious of the medical community. 

"I just got scared. I got spooked. I thought, 'There's a lot of smoke, there must be fire.' We stopped vaccinating," she said. Three of Tara Hills's seven children peer out the window of their Kanata home in Ottawa, isolated as they get over whooping cough.

Hills said she had recently started rethinking her position on vaccinations. Before her youngest was diagnosed with whooping cough, she said, she met with her family doctor to put together a "catch-up vaccination schedule" for her children. 

"It's very sobering and it's very raw because we had just made a more fully informed decision about vaccinations. We had just defected from the anti-vaccination camp," she said. 

"It was too late. It's so ironic and I'm not beating myself up for it. I just hope we can use this very painful experience to encourage other people like us to maybe re-examine the issue."

Whooping Cough is no joke, as this poor woman has learned the hard way:  

My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before. Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.

So thanks to the ignorance of this mother her children are forced to suffer.

Kind of sad that this woman was so slow in realizing that vaccinations are not something evil the medical community inflicts on our children,  but rather something positive that they provide to protect all of us from harm.

But that is the result of people spreading false information on places like Facebook and Twitter to an impressionable populace who have been conditioned to panic by media outlets like Fox News.

Well it looks as if Ebola refuses to be the media's boogeyman this Halloween season.

Despite attempts by virtually ALL of the cable news outlets Ebola is simply not living up to the hype.

Courtesy of WFAA:  

Louise Troh, whose fiance Thomas Eric Duncan,became the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola, says she and her family are showing no signs of the deadly disease after a 21-day quarantine. 

Duncan died on October 8. 

Since then, two nurses who had cared for him at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas have contracted the Ebola virus and are being treated at hospitals in Maryland and Atlanta.

The two nurses of course came into contact with Duncan at his MOST infectious and at least one of them is "doing quite well."

So the fact that nobody on the plane arriving in America with Duncan, nor the family members who spent two days with him while he became increasingly ill, have contracted the disease speaks to the fact that it was never the "ISIS of biological agents" that some less than responsible news outlets painted it to be.

And in fact in some of the places where the disease DID get a real toehold there is already vast improvement. Such as Nigeria: 

The World Health Organization declared Nigeria Ebola free on Monday after a 42 day period with no new cases, a success story with lessons for countries still struggling to contain the deadly virus. "Nigeria is now free of Ebola," WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in the capital Abuja, prompting a round of applause from other officials. "This is a spectacular success story ... But we must be clear that we have only won a battle, the war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola. 

The first case in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, was imported from Liberia, when a Liberian-American diplomat called Patrick Sawyer collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20. Because the country was ill prepared and had no screening procedures in place, Sawyer was able to infect several people, including several health workers in the hospital where he was taken. 

Ebola has killed 4,546 people across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the three worst-affected countries. Nigeria had 20 cases in total, of which eight died.

Gee with this now downgraded from world ending viral infection, to manageable health concern, I wonder what the media will use next to attack the President and terrify the American people?

Well I guess we still have ISIS right?

Boo, everybody, boo.

I have an almost preternatural inability to write anything nice about the Bush family, but I thought this was pretty cool.

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:

Former President George H. W. Bush shaved his head Wednesday as a show of solidarity with a 2-year-old-boy who is battling leukemia. 

The boy, named Patrick, is the son of one of the members of Bush’s security detail. He had lost most of his hair due to his cancer treatments, a Bush spokesman said. 

Bush, 89, got the idea to shave his head to show his support after he noticed that several members of his Secret Service detail, known as the Bush Protective Division, had also shaved their heads in solidarity with Patrick. 

 I have to admit that my disgust for the Bush family has not always included "Pappy" Bush who I saw as a MUCH more moderate President, and one who inspired anger from his own party for at least trying to do what he thought was right.

Here is a picture of the former President getting his head shaved.

Hillary Clinton faints, suffers concussion. Update!

This from TPM:  

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion, the Associated Press reported on Saturday. Clinton is now "recovering at home."

#SecClinton dehydrated from stomach bug, fainted & sustained a concussion per StateDept's Philippe Reines. Recovering @ home
— margaret brennan (@margbrennan) December 15, 2012

According to reports the Secretary of State was at home when this incident took place.

Hopefully they make sure she is fully recovered before returning to work.

The country needs her at the top of her game in 2016.

Update: I just heard that this fall happened s few days ago. She seems to be recovering well.

Colbert Report suspended possibly due to illness of Stephen's mother.

Courtesy of the Huffington Post: Multiple outlets have cited a family illness as the cause of the suspension of "The Colbert Report," and now a person who has a business relationship with the show has told Huffington Post that the host's mother is seriously ill, and the show will remain suspended until he can return.

As many of you no doubt know Colbert's father and two brothers died when he was quite young and, since he was the youngest and his other siblings had moved out already, after that tragedy he and his mother lived alone together until he left for college.

Obviously they were extremely close, as you can certainly discern from this rare interview with Mrs. Colbert in 2008.


In my opinion Stephen Colbert is a national treasure and  we are very lucky to have him. For that all of us owe his mother a great deal of thanks, and to let her know that she is in our hearts.

I don't pray, but I certainly would not hold it against any of you for doing so.