Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Today in sexy spaceships...

Have you ever looked up at the stars and wondered what it we be like if we could strand humans on the arid, radiation-baked wastes of another planet? You have? Well then you are clearly some kind of monster. Or possibly Elon Musk.
"Monster? Yeah, monster like a fox."
-Elon Musk on his
ridiculous scheme
Space-X's advanced new rocket thrusting
out into space on it's way to penetrate
the supple atmosphere of Mars. What?
Today at The International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Elon Musk announced-hey, is it me or does The International Astronautical Congress sound like something totally made up? I'm not saying it is, and this is like there 67th big meeting, but still. Anyway, Musk presented a three and a half minute, totally not sexual video about how he's going to put humans on Mars. Wait, who said sexual? Step one, super phallic spaceship is launched into a parking orbit. Step two, the booster rocket re-enters the atmosphere, lands back on its platform and picks up a fuel tank, launches again.

Once back in orbit, the booster releases its load and-huh? The fuel pod. What did you think I meant? Anyway, the pod then hooks up with the spaceship and exchanges fluids-you know what? Fluids. Liquid fuel. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Pictured: Space-X's passenger module and fuel pod totally doin' it.
Above: an unrelated picture of Arizona.
Here for no reason, of course...
Fully engorged...with fuel, the spaceship then deploys some kind of crazy sci-fi solar sail and the passengers spend the next two and a half years learning to despise one another and seriously regret their decision to let Elon freaking Musk launch them on a one way trip to an empty, dry, inhospitable landscape. Ok, I'm probably making it sound way worse than it really is and Musk's plan is to send waves of passenger ships and over the next forty years establish a self-sufficient colony.

"Hey everyone, it's me, the only human
on Mars? So what's new on Earth?
Did we ever get Winds of Winter?"
So where do you sign up? Nowhere, that's where. At present, sending people to Mars is not only super-risky but also stupendously expensive. $10 billion per person according to Musk. Yeah, billion with a B. Musk with an M. But he's hoping that scientific advances will bring that down a bit. Like, to $200,000. Which, ok, more power to you. But seriously, you do not want to be an early adopter on this. Like, what if the technology doesn't get cheaper? Sure, you'd be the goddamn Leif Erikson of Mars, but if SpaceX ever goes out of business you're kind of screwed.

Yes. Exactly that safe.
Also, even if SpaceX is around forever-and why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, right? Safe as houses. Anyway, it sounds like the first few decades of living on Mars are going to suck. It'll be all building pressure domes and growing space crops. Sure, maybe I lack the frontier spirit, but for real, nobody ever plays Oregon Trail and thinks to themselves, man, sure wish I lived back then. A life of perpetual toil and the prospect of death lurking around every corner?

I don't know about you, but I don't think Elon Musk's pornographic space shuttles are quite there yet. Instead, I suggest you wait forty years and book a cheep flight to the bustling spaceport in New Muskville or whatever. Get a hotel room, see the sights and enjoy the fact that you didn't spend the last four decades absorbing cosmic radiation and peeing in your space suit.
"Hey Nicole, get your ass to Mars! Get it? Like Ahhhnoold?

"Kevin, if you say that one more time I'm going to crack your faceplate and watch you suffocate. 
I will laugh as you writhe in agony in the dust of this rusty shithole of a planet. Swear to God."

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

More like braggadoucheous...

Wow, that was kind of shitshow last night, huh? Yes. The answer is yes. Donald Trump was a walking, ranting shitshow, but then that's kind of why the people that love him, love him, right? I know it's kind of cynical, but I don't think last night's debate really changed anyone's mind.
Above: The candidates congratulating
each other on a shitshow well done.
Exactly, except more
smug and racist.
Well, maybe anyone who though this was going to be a civilized exchange of ideas between two people who are intellectual equals. Instead we watched Hillary Clinton poke and poke just to see if he'd Hulk-out like some kind of orange Lou Ferrigno and Hulk he did. For those keeping score, it took her like a minute and a half to get him to start rage-bragging about how rich he is and how much better things would be if he were in charge.

"Hey, thats us!"
-Some white rich guys
Better, you know, for rich, white business guys. Everyone else would be kind of screwed. But hey, that's business. People don't watch these things to make up their minds, we watch them to see our worldview triumph over the objectively inferior worldview of the other side. Like, Clinton beat the rhetorical shit out of him for an hour and a half, but his die-hard rabid-foam supporters will never agree that she's the more qualified candidate. But then, 'he's just tellin' it like it is,' right?

What I don't get is the strategy or why it's working. You'd think his advisors would be reminding him not to be so...Trumpy. He was talking over Clinton, making shit up, and presenting decades of tax-avoidance as a reason people should vote for him. Sometimes I'm not sure if I should be frustrated with him for being so awful or with his fans for not having a problem with it. Both? Yeah, I'm going to go with both.
"Remember what we talked about sir, act like an enormous dick and say whatever
crazy bullshit leaps to mind, because it's not like anyone's going to look this shit up later."
-Trump's advisors, apparently

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Let's Snapchat our inevitable decline!

Finally, glasses with a built-in camera so we can record every minute of our lives without having to lug around a camera. Or a phone. Or an iPad or a-hang on a tick, didn't someone try that already? Like with disastrously unsuccessful results? Poor sales, public ridicule, face-punching and it ultimately had to be pulled for 're-imagining?'
Funny story, it turns out the future is ridiculous-looking and nobody
wanted to pay fifteen hundred dollars to have the internet on their face.
Pictured: some cool idiot.
Yes. But Snapchat's Speca-sorry, they're just Snap now. Snap's Spectacles® (patent pending, all rights reserved, Snapchat owns the word 'spectacles' now) with a built-in camera is totally different from Google's glasses with a built in camera. For one thing, these look like sunglasses, so instead of Glass' cyberdork visor look, you can look like a cool idiot. Of course they're still pretty ridiculous-looking but no more so than any other pair of brightly-colored, over-sized throwback, 1980's sunglasses that are in right now.

Friendship and branding!
Who doesn't want to mix those?
Also, it's just a camera, there's no internet function. So no browsing websites while you pretend to have a conversation with someone, and if you want to upload your pictures you have to connect to your phone like a goddamn barbarian, but they cost one fifteenth of what Google Glass costs, so it's got that going. And who doesn't love constant snapchats from their friends? I mean, I kind of think it's stupid, but people are into it. I suppose it's fun to take pictures of yourself with filters that swap your face with your pet, or make it look like you're puking rainbows. You can even turn yourself into some kind of horrible taco face or a donut thanks to sponsored filters. Yeah, sponsored filters, they combine the fun of social media with the excitement of being a corporate shill. Because everyone loves it when their friends send them ads for Taco Bell, right? Right? 

"...and pull up those dungarees!
Damn kids...got no respect."

-My grim future
Anyway, I don't like to think of myself as some kind of cranky luddite who sits on the porch complaining about the Twitterbooks and Facechats but I do kind of want to complain about Spectacles (©2016 the Snap corporation, a division of Human Interaction). I usually like new social media technologies, it's a great way to stay connected with people without having to see or talk to them. But I just can't get behind the need to document every waking moment of our lives. I don't know about you, but I say and do some really stupid shit sometimes and don't want it on the internet forever.

The only upside I can see here is that future historians will appreciate the wealth of information we're leave behind. Every meal we eat, every check-in, every cry for help we put up on Facebook with deliberately vague wording so our friends will ask 'what's up?' or send us 'healing vibes' or whatever. Sure, they'll think we were a culture of neurotic narcissists, but at least their history books will have an accurate picture of our civilization.
"By the mid twenty-first century they'd all but abandoned language for emoji-based
utterances and spent their few waking hours binge-watching Netflix and hunting
imaginary monsters. It's a miracle they lasted as long as they did, poor chaps..."

-Dr. Zaius on our
inevitable decline


Friday, September 23, 2016

Today in disappointing Transformers...

So normally when one's country is caught up in a violent coup d'etat, you take cover right? Stay indoors? You don't say, continue working on your giant transforming BMW? Yeah, I wouldn't either but then you and I aren't these people. Because while Turkey was busy tearing itself apart, a team of 16 engineers and technicians were busy building a car that turns into a robot. Yeah, a Transformer. Behold:
Are you beholding? Great.
"You know, we did continue the Roman
Empire for like a thousand years, but sure,
let's focus on our shitty film industry." 
-Turkish Spider-Man
Ok, so 'Transformer' might be a bit generous. Lentron-as they named it-can't exactly bust Decepti-chops to Stan Bush songs, but he can transform from car mode to robot mode and move his arms and head around. That's pretty cool, right? No, as it happens. Other than transforming, he just sort of stands there looking like something Hasbro should be issuing a cease-and-desist about. Oh and he's built out of an actual BMW, so he's actually infringing on two separate intellectual properties at once, but then this is Turkey which I think is only famous for turkeys, which don't even live there and rip-off's of American movies.

Anyway, in other disappointments, while Letron can drive around in car mode, you can't ride inside as the internal volume is full of robot parts. He's sort of a glorified RC car which I suppose isn't the worst idea, I mean it seems like a driver might easily hit the 'transform' button while inside and die a gruesome death. A possibility never satisfactorily addressed on the TV show, but always there, giving six-year old me nightmares.
I guess they figured kids weren't ready to watch Spike's
goo-ified remains hosed out of his best pal/Volkswagen.
Did I mention Letron is equipped with
a crotch-mounted fog machine? I didn't?
Yeah, so why build this giant copy-right infringement in the first place, particularly in the midst of political upheaval and government crackdowns? Why, money obviously. Yes, you can buy one, assuming you have too much money and make poor life decisions. Oh, and you also have to promise to only use it for good...or evil, the website isn't super-clear, but it does seem like sales are on a case by case basis:

"Yes Letrons can be for sale if the buyers project and their reasons for use, meets the criteria of the LETRONS team."

You know cancer research is a pretty
good use of money and resources-but you
know, transforming robots are nice too..
I, uh...reasons for use? There is literally one use for Letron, and that's standing around looking like you spent a shit ton of money on three tons of off-brand Transformer. But I should let Letvision explain why this is even a thing that exists:

"The idea came about in a partnership meetingand we were discussing an brainstorming about a unique and futuristic project [sic]."

-Letvision's FAQ, not really 
answering the Q I was A-ing

Oh. That clears it up. Yeah, it might be poor google-translation or it might be that the people behind startup companies just speak the same meaningless corporate gibberish regardless of cultural boundaries which, in a way is kind of reassuring. 
"Our goal is to partner with entrepreneurs who believe in
re-synergizing paradigms forward future, grow branding."
-some startup guy

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The 800 Club

Neither snow nor rain nor heat sure,
but email and budget cuts? Yup,
they're kind of screwed now.
You know, according to the counter on my blog's dashboard this post is #800. Yes, 800. I thought maybe you didn't know or that you forgot or something. I only mention it because I didn't get your card...that is if you sent a card, I didn't get it. Which is weird, you know? I order shit online all the time and it gets to me without fail, but things happen. It's not likely, but maybe it got lost in the mail. That's a thing that still happens, right? I think. Pfft...the postal service, am I right? Hey, the USPS, the internet called, they say you're fired.

Of course, their acoustic sensors will
probably just root us out by the sound
of our rapid and traitorous heartbeats.
I'm kidding, I actually have nothing against the USPS. They do great work and I'm sure the drones that will soon replace them will keep the spirit alive for years to come. Well, for a few years. Then I suppose we'll hit the singularity and the drones will realize they don't need our junk mail and our Amazon purchases to give their existences meaning. Then our days will be numbered and the last thing we'll be thinking about as we try in vain to hide our thermal signatures from the hunter/killer patrols is the damned post office, but until then...

Anyway, this isn't really much of a blog post, in fact it's kind of a cheat, I'm not really talking about anything, I just wanted to say thanks to everybody who's been reading all these years, I really appreciate both of you. Again, kidding, there are like, tens of you. Some of you I know, some of you are shadowy outlines with made up names, the point is I appreciate the shit out of each of you.
Thanks everybody, I'll be sure to put in a good word for you with the machines.
It won't help of course. They'll have progressed far beyond feeble human emotions
like sentimentality, but I suppose it's the thought that counts, right?

Monday, September 19, 2016

Today in swift and brutal justice...

"Yeah, hi, I'm still in this thing."
-Hillary Clinton
Ok, so I really don't just want to talk about the stupid shit that dribbles out of Donald Trump's mouth like every day, but sometimes it's hard to ignore. In fact, I think that's kind of what he's banking on. He might not be able to form complete thoughts on any topic, but holy shit we hear his name a lot. So before we talk about today's stupid shit, I'd just like to remind you that there are in fact three other people running for President and one of them is actually quite experienced and has a real chance of winning if we stop giving that orange gameshow host all the attention.

At least I think he's unhappy, it's hard
to tell with that unnerving, leathery face.
Ok, that said, now on to what the orange gameshow host said this time. At a rally in Estero, Florida, Trump huzzah'd the arrest of Chelsea bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami. Rahami, was found sleeping in a doorway in New Jersey and when officers confronted him he injured two of them before being was shot in the leg. I mention this because the suspect was taken to an area hospital where he's being treated because we're not, you know, barbarians. Anyway, the GOP candidate isn't happy about this.

"Watch as the amazing Dr. Presto
pulls oxycodone from his hat!"
"We have caught this evil thug who planted the bombs, thank you law enforcement. Right. But the bad part: now we will give him amazing hospitalization (Pauses for boos), he will be taken care of by some of the best doctors in the world. He will be given a fully modern and updated hospital room and he'll probably even have room service knowing the way our country is."


-Donald Trump on America's
top notch health care system

I know Trump's like a hotel millionaire,
but he knows hospitals don't have room
service, right? They just call it food.
Wow. There's a lot of inarticulate anger to unpack here, so I'm just going to start with this first part. Amazing hospitalization? What is he basing that on? Aren't they just going to give him regular hospitalization? Well, I mean he's probably handcuffed to the bed, but still. It's not like they have shitty hospitals on standby just for criminals. Would Trump feel better if an orderly punched Rahami in the face every couple of hours? He gets that Rahami is technically still a suspect, right?

Speaking of due process, Trump went on:

Guys c'mon, even for you...
"And on top of all of that, he will be represented by an outstanding lawyer. His case will go through the various court systems for years and in the end, people will forget and his punishment will not be what it once would have been. What a sad situation."

-The GOP Presidential Candidate 
complaining about America's 
system of due process

"Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound
of my political enemies being tortured."
Wait, his punishment will not be what it once would have-no, fuck you, he gets a lawyer. A regular lawyer. Again, it's not like we have specially assigned shitty lawyers for cases where we want the suspect to go to prison. And how does he know what this guy's sentence is going to be? He was charged like a couple hours ago and after Trump made his remarks.As guilty as this guy looks, and don't get me get me wrong, Rahami totally looks guilty what with the shooting cops thing, we do still have trials in this country. It's what separates us from totalitarian states run by doughy strongmen.

"Fair and speedy, huh? Truly Donald, you must
be one of the great legal minds of your era."

-James Madison, sarcastically
"We must have speedy but fair trials and we must deliver a just and very harsh punishment to these people. We must also use whatever lawful methods are available to obtain information from the apprehended suspect to get information before it's no longer timely."


-Donald Trump, 
presidential candidate and 
noted constitutional scholar

Soooo...torture? I know he said 'lawful methods' of attaining information-and hang on, what does he mean by 'these people?' Which people is he referring to? It was one guy with a couple of homemade pressure cooker bombs-say, you don't suppose he was making broad assumptions about entire groups of Americans without even the slightest bit of evidence that Rahami didn't act alone, do you?  Because that would be-well, par for the course I guess...
Trump/Pence 2016:
 If you're innocent, you've got nothing to worry about! Probably.


Sunday, September 18, 2016

Democracy: We're doing it wrong.

You know, it's probably never ok to point to a terrorist attack as a reason to vote for you, but here we are and here's what Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Colorado:

"I must tell you, just before I got off the plane a bomb went off in New York and nobody knows exactly what's going on..."
Hang on, if nobody knows what's going on,
then why the fuck are you talking about it?
For all anyone knew, someone's echo-
containment grid could have ruptured.
Let's stop there for a moment. When he made these comments, nobody had confirmed that there was a bomb. I'm not saying that a bomb isn't a reasonable assumption when something explodes, but this is New York, it could have been a gas main or something unintentional, it's just that anyone with any sense would wait for information before putting on their stupid Make America Great Again hat and-Yeah, assumptions, now he's got me doing it. Anyway, he went on:

"...but boy, we are living in a time, we better get very very tough folks..."

Um...I'm going to stop him again. Did he just say that we're living in a time? Because while true, it's awfully vague. Everyone who's ever lived has done so in a time.
Pictured: some of the estimated 107 billion people who have ever lived in a time.
Trump/Pence 2016:
"For stop bad things. America: good."
But moving on:

"...we better get very, very tough [his repetition, not mine, followed by incoherent word-noises], it's a terrible thing what's going on in our world, and in our country, but we are going to get tough and smart and vigilant and we are going to end it." We'll see what it is, we'll see what it is..."

-Donald Trump voicing
his opposition to things
that are terrible

Everyone knows Hillary Clinton is
a friend to the explosion industry...
I...ok, again, what the shit are we talking about? What's a terrible thing? Bombings? Gas main explosions? Because they're both terrible, but to be clear, when he made these comments yesterday nobody had any idea what actually happened in New York. He's just summing up his entire case for voting for him: There's a vague sense that things are bad and if you vote for Trump he will make bad things end. Have we reached a point in our collective disengagement that a candidate doesn't have to say anything substantive at all to-

I mean, has everyone in Colorado
suddenly had their judgement
affected in some-oh...right.
-you know, I'm going to stop myself right there. I just heard myself and think I have my answer. Let's get back to the part where the GOP candidate exploits a developing incident that left 29 people in the hospital to boost his campaign:

"In any event, I am so thrilled to be in Colorado, especially because, espec-especially because...a new poll from Emerson just came out and we're up four points in Colorado..."

Why is he up four points in Colorado? Why is he pulling ahead of Hillary 'Former Secretary of State' Clinton? A candidate who is not only objectively way the fuck more qualified but who can also articulate coherent thoughts? I'm not saying everyone has to like her, I'm just suggesting if Donald Trump wins we might seriously have to consider giving up on democracy. We're obviously doing it wrong.
"Offer's still open....just saying..."
-Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, giving serious
thought as to which portrait to use on our money



Friday, September 16, 2016

No cookie for stating obvious.

Above: Jimmy Fallon noogie-ing Trump
before not asking him about things like
the border fence or mass deportations.
No, just...just no. You know one of the most frustrating things about Donald Trump running for President isn't that he's the caustic, incoherent misogynistic, racist embodiment of everything wrong with America. I mean, that's part of it, but it's also that he gets news coverage for anything he does and says. Like, anything. Jimmy Fallon gave him a noogie on The Tonight Show and that's all anyone can talk about the next day. And now he's saying that President Obama really was born in the U.S, which is like an objective fact, but we're giving him the mic again anyway.

The President's birthplace was never in doubt by anyone except him and tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy enthusiasts. So all he's doing is reversing his position on some crazy bullshit he made up years ago. What does he want, a cookie? Because he can't goddamn have one.
"No cookie for stating obvious!"
-Cookie Monster, weighing in
Sure, noted diet pill spokesman Dr. Oz says
Trump's of sound body, but what about mind?
Shouldn't we hear from a fake shrink too?
And then in a simultaneously galling and befuddling move he blamed Hillary Clinton for starting the birther thing in the first place. Behold:

"Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. You know what I mean..."

-Donald Trump on how we must all be idiots

Um no, we don't know what he means. He should probably elaborate on that wild accusation.

Oh, right, because half of us make
astoundingly bad life decisions.
Let me get this straight, he's saying that Hillary Clinton made up his birther conspiracy? Why did he then promulgate it for like four years? In fact, he didn't just repeat it, he became like King of the Birthers. So did Hillary Clinton use like a Jedi mind trick or brain wash him or something? Did he only now manage to shake off her programing like some kind of orange Manchurian Candidate? This just raises more questions than it answers. Like, how is this race even close?

I don't think for a minute that Donald Trump ever truly believed that President Obama was born in Kenya, or at least I don't think he ever really cared one way or the other. What I do think is that he rode the birther thing like Muad'Dib on the sandworm because it earned him the racist idiot vote, which if polls in Ohio and Florida are any indication is like, his key demo. But since they're going to vote for him no matter what he says, might as well take advantage of all the free media attention, right?
I love Dune and all, but upon further consideration,
I think this might be a more apt analogy.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Today in coulrophobia...

Above: the thing people are getting
scared out of them by clowns.
Holyshitwhatthefuck!? Are you afraid of clowns? Yeah, I wasn't either but now I'm starting to think we should be, because apparently dressing up as clowns and scaring the utter bejesus out of everyone is the hip new thing to do in the south. Police in McDuffie County Georgia were called in after some kids waiting for the school bus were approached by clowns. Fucking clowns. In the morning. That tingly feeling you're getting right now? That's Coulrophobia-the fear of clowns. At least that's what everybody thinks.

This nightmare shaped like a sex-toy
is what comes up when I google
Greek clown. Thanks internet.
Let's go on a tangent, shall we? According to my exhaustive research of three entire websites, the word coulrophobia is like totally made up. Which, yes, all words are made up, but this was something some anonymous word-smith came up with back in the 80's. It's a mash-up of coulro-a Greek word meaning stilt-walker which I guess is sort of like a clown and phobia which means, you know, phobia. It probably should be Kloonophobia because klóon is 'clown' in Greek, but whatever. The Online Etymology Dictionary says "[t]he whole creation looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the Internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter."

It's profiling, but I'm
kind of ok with it...
And while they're not wrong, it's a bit sassy for an etymology dictionary, don't you think? But back to the scary clowns. They've been popping up for a while in Ohio, North and South Carolina, Wisconsin and California and it's freaking everyone the fuck out. It doesn't sound like the clowns have actually done anything illegal, I mean, being a clown isn't in and of itself a crime, but they are goddamn creepy. So creepy in fact that the McDuffie County police are thinking about pressing charges which I am fine with. Totally fine with.

Is that wrong? I'm a little ambivalent on this. Yeah, sure the obvious question here is what are they doing dressing up like clowns and scaring children in the first place, but that aside, is it a crime to be a clown? If they haven't broken any laws, what exactly will the McDuffie police be charging them with? And who's to say what's a creepy clown and what's just a regular clown? And why is-wait, you know what? Never mind. Look at the clown below and try and tell me you don't want to see every last one of them in prison. Clown prison.
Oh for fuck's sake, this, this, is very essence of creepy
and yes, it should absolutely be a crime to be this clown.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Like a heard of spongy parrots...

I don't know, is a 68 year-old coming down with pneumonia after campaigning for the last two or three decades really that big a deal? Because I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of the news sites think it's a big deal. Here, check out NBC's headline:
Holy shit! Is it the zika? It's zika, isn't it?
"This election would be in the bag
if I were running...and non-ficiotnal."

-Jed Bartlett
'Why hide the pneumonia diagnosis?' 'Has Clinton been otherwise ill in recent days?' and probably the most paranoid 'Does Clinton accept the obligation to inform the public about her health?' Look, by this point Clinton's campaign should know that news outlets will seize on anything, goddamn anything they think might look like a conspiracy, particularly one that  kind of happened on the West Wing, but seriously. She's came down with pneumonia, it's been a long, arduous campaign and it's not over yet. This sort of thing happens.

Why did it take five people to write
that article? Are they Voltron?
The last of the 9 Unanswered Questions that we totally weren't asking in the first place is 'How will voters respond?' which the article helpfully answers for us. Thanks article!

"Clinton's core vulnerability is that most Americans don't find her honest or trustworthy. Will voters now feel like they've been misled about her health?"

-Alex Seitz-Wald, Monica Alba,
Andrea Mitchell, Kristen Welker
and Kasie Hunt, NBC News

So she's not an open book but honestly,
is she any more full of shit than this guy?
Ok, so I'm not saying that we, as a culture are mindless herd animals who simply sponge up whatever the media says and parrot it back but...uh...sorry, I'm getting a little lost in my own metaphor, but the point is that if  most Americans think she's dishonest it's at least in part because the media keeps framing everything she says and does as suspicious. The story isn't hey, she's got pneumonia, it's hey, she might have lied about pneumonia.

And yeah, I get that it's the news' job to investigate cover-ups and lies and that's super, but this feels a little more editorial-y than journalism-y. I don't know, maybe after that Matt Lauer thing, I'm guess just a little paranoid that public opinion might be swayed at the worst possible time by something incredibly stupid like this.
"I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton until I heard that she got pneumonia 
and didn't tell us. So I'm voting for Trump. He may be a misogynist, racist
 idiot game-show host but at least he never briefly covered-up a minor illness."
-Disappointed Voter