Is Hilary Clinton a subversive, a hypocrite, or unaware of what she's saying?

Has anyone besides me been hearing bits of Hilary Clinton's speeches in various places around the world and been startled by the things she's been saying there?

(google is not being my friend.  It wants to show me speeches from 2008)

She told Peru that the rich have to pay their share of the taxes and they had to adequately fund their social institutions and protect human rights.

She told Saudi Arabia to support women's rights (well, they are so far from dealing with abortion and medical care access, since the women can't even go outside, so maybe that's not threatening to US interests at home).

Thwere were more of these sprinkled throughout the week, but naturally I can't find them right now.  I wish I could: there's a pattern here, and I know what it is, but I don't know what it means.

Almost every time she opens her mouth and says something to another people, she articulates the demands that the US left has been making of President Obama.  And then when she talks to US Democrats, she says "don't give up on Obama."

What the hell is she doing?  Is she trying to further a progressive agenda by making these outward-directed speeches?  Is she trying to paper over the huge cracks in the Democratic platform?  Or does she have no idea what she's doing?

Idiotic health related things

No, not healthcare related things at the moment.
( TMI to follow: trying an lj-cut in rich text editor because I fail at it in html )

1) My doctor's office called me today to tell me that the FDA has cut the recommended dose for Simvastatin in half, because the old dose was causing muscle deterioration.  I've been on the standard dose for years and years and years. I asked "how would you know if you were getting this muscle deterioration?"

Muscle pain and weakness, she said.

So, I had thought that I was experiencing the various weird muscle cramps and not being as strong as I used to be because of sedentary habits and possibly insufficient potassium (being on diuretics raises your need for potassium).  Of course, I actually still could be, and honestly I've had less of the pain since I started making sure I get more high-potassium foods, and I have had less of the pain since I have been making sure I walk the dogs and work in the garden and stuff.  But, well, it could be part of the picture.  So I'm cutting my pills in half.  The bonus is that I just filled my prescription, so a month's supply of simvastatin will actually be two months' supply this time.  Too bad I can't keep getting the 80s -- next time I buy the drug it will be a 40.

2) Yesterday I had a coughing relapse.  At first I thought it was another wave of the bad cold I had last week.  It probably was, partly, because my nose has never stopped being weird. But I realized part way through the day that I was also having especially bad coughinf fits soon after I ate, and I've been aware that I had drifted into eating way more starchy food and sweets and dairy than I ought to but I was just too lazy to work out what to eat instead (that's why the irreproducible recipes posts last week).  So I figured that at least some of the relapse is due to bad diet.
Then this morning I discovered that (a) I had forgotten and left accessible food on the counter overnight for the first time in a long time and (b) the rat that I thought had left because there was no obvious sign of its presence had not gone, and in fact had gnawed a hole a bit bigger than a ping-pong ball in the hunk of parmesan cheese.  As the day progressed I became convinced that part of my relapse is in fact due to the fact that I have had a rat for two months and I am intensely allergic to rats (and no other thing, though I have some non-allergy sensitivities, obviously).  And I don't know if it's the power of suggestion but my skin is prickling like it always used to when we had pet rats and I keep getting that horrible unsatisfying cough that goes on and on and doesn't dislodge the thickness back there.

Why have I had a rat for two months?  Because I am a wuss.  First I tried to sic the dog and the extra dog on the rat.  Unfortunately, both of them lived in households with pet rodents in their youth, and while Truffle will in fact kill a couple of gophers, voles or wild rats in the field every spring, they both seem to think that a rodent in the house is a scary authority figure they dare not even bark at.  Then I had to go all the way to Capitola to buy a rat trap because where do you buy one in Santa Cruz? (I just thought of a place I will go to tomorrow)  Then I had to work up my courage to set up the rat trap.  And it was even harder because Zack said to put it into a paper bag so I wouldn't have to touch the rat.  And then I got desperate and I finally tried to set the trap and it sprung immediately and then wouldn't reset again for drugs or money.  So no rat trap anymore.

Tomorrow I buy several rat traps of different designs (all in the spring type: no bait, no glue: I want the thing to die as quickly and painlessly as possible.  No catch and release because what would that accomplish?  We're talking about a serious threat to my health here) and I will set them carefully with no extra flourishes but just yummy bait, one at a time.

This condition threatens more than my daily health.  I can't do anything really vigorous while it's in sway because the slightest movement causes a coughing fit and urinary disaster (no, dears, kegels have kept this manageable when I'm not having overwhelming coughing fits, but they don't cure it, and nothing seems to help when I am having these coughing fits except to sit on many layers of folded towels and do lots of laundry).  I can make it through a day of work by spending a lot of time in the bathroom and taking a wide variety of drugs (antihistamine, antacid for the acid reflux component which is there even with the right diet and acid-reducing drugs during the periods when coughing fits are likely to happen, and demulcent/menthol cough drops -- Hall's or Luden's or Ricola, like that).  But I can't dance or run or be embarrassed (yes, dogdamn it, being embarrassed or otherwise emotionally stressed overpowers both my cough control and my bladder when I am in this kind of cycle).

The good thing about this noise is that there appears to be some reason to think I can get back on track, health and activity wise.

(tell me if I managed to get an lj-cut to work?  I had given up on using them because they never seemed to work)

technical problem: sound

So I started recording my songs.  That is, songs I sing.  I have a bit less than forty recorded.  However, as of today -- not yesterday, when everything was behaving normally -- I can only hear the songs I recorded, period, no other sound files, and only when I have the headphones plugged in.

Previously, if I unplugged the headphones, the speakers would work normally.  I have checked what I know to check: connections, volume/mute settings.  I know something changed somewhere because when I test the speaker jack a new dialog box comes up I've never seen before.  It's a RealTek settings popup I've never ever ever seen before asking me whether I've plugged in a headphone, a line out, or a rear speaker.  By clicking around in its settings, I was able to tell it to stop muting the speaker when the headphones are plugged in (though I must reiterate that the problem is not when the headphones are plugged in, it's when they are not).  No change to the basic problem.  I don't even know where to begin troubleshooting this.