There she finally was, up on the stage, all in white. Just like Nurse
Ratched. And like Nurse Ratched she was there to calmly and logically
explain to all of us how a very bad boy had broken too many rules.
Randall Patrick McTrumpy, Nurse Hillary told us, could no longer be
allowed to continue on his mission to turn America into a cuckoo’s nest.
So she asked America to step up and serve as her orderlies, to
straight-jacket McTrumpy and wrestle him to the nearest lobotomy table.
But as Hillary Clinton made history Thursday night in Philadelphia —
she is now officially the first major-party female candidate for
president to bore a nation into coma — she forgot that no one roots for
Nurse Ratched. Trump is the former star of the No. 1 reality-show on TV;
Hillary was like a PBS pledge drive.
Mrs. Clinton didn’t just muff her acceptance speech the way her
husband face-planted in his legendarily dull 1988 nomination speech in
Atlanta. It was like she was filibustering her own candidacy. After
America spent half a week wondering whether Donald Trump was secretly
working for Vladimir Putin, Hillary made it equally plausible that she
was secretly working for Karl Rove. Where Trump delivered red meat with a
steak knife sticking out of it, Clinton served us steamed rutabagas
with a plastic spork and a gentle but firm warning not to use too much
salt because sodium might be bad for you. A supporter wears campaign buttons as she waits for Hillary Clinton during a rally in Philadelphia.
The hacks say that politics means campaigning in poetry but governing
in prose. Hillary can’t even campaign in prose. She campaigns in
hectoring nullity, in regulese. She campaigns like pages 11,247-12,301
of the Federal Register. One commentator on NBC, who wasn’t even trying
to be mean, helplessly compared her speech to Walter Mondale’s
self-immolating address in 1984 in San Francisco.
At no point did Clinton address her huge disapproval rating, her
history of mendacious acts, her tongue-lashing earlier this month by the
director of the FBI. Instead the speech toggled from hopeful sentiments
(delivered with an incongruous angry scowl) to attempts to claim victim
status because her mother apparently used to use coupons to buy food
(back in olden days before her daughter and son in law made $221 million
peddling access to their majesties) to Trump-punching that was
competent but hardly lethal.
When she promised every middle-class family in America free college
tuition, it somehow sounded like a threat. She claimed, credibly, to be a
master of legislative details that don’t unduly burden the imagination
of The Donald, but she came across as the uptight girl in the perfect
twinset, sitting up straight in the front row of Trigonometry waving an
overeager fan in the teacher’s face while everyone whispers “Why do we
need trigonometry” and wonders what’ll happen when the class jock
snoozing in the back row, the one in the baseball jacket with “Don”
written in cursive across it, finally wakes up.
Is Hillary Clinton more qualified than Donald Trump to be president?
Is the head of pediatrics at Columbia-Presbyterian more qualified to
examine your sick child than your bus driver? Of course she is. But if
getting elected president were about presenting the better résumé, John
McCain would have clobbered Barack Obama. Becoming president is about
capturing our imagination. Hillary may deserve it, but that doesn’t mean
we deserve her. The president is the person who appears in your family
room more than anyone else outside your family.
Can the republic endure four years of her every night? Trump is often
compared to Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves in “Network,”
but it’s Hillary who could actually make us not only stick our heads
out the windows but toss our TVs while doing so. Ten minutes of any
Hillary speech and it’ll be, “We’re bored as hell, and we’re not gonna
take it anymore!”
Pre-Hillary, the week had gone brilliantly for Democrats. Michelle
Obama, Joe Biden and President Obama were excellent, but mainly they
just made us want to be with them, not her. If any one of the three went
up against Trump in November, they’d demolish him. A supporter waits for Republican nominee Donald Trump in Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
Team Hillary made the mistake of allowing the anticipation level to
rise too high, and immediately after she started speaking the energy
level in the room began to drop. It was as though we were all sitting
through that dreadful first-time showing of “The Phantom Menace” again,
asking ourselves: It can’t be this bad, can it?
Hillary will make history either way in November. Either she
completes her 16-year mission to return to the Oval Office or she goes
in the books as the biggest choke artist ever to grace the American
arena.
Lame-duck presidents rarely get much done in their final year, or even try — clearing the field for election- year politics. But President Obama is plainly intent on feeding partisan rancor in 2016 — via unconstitutional overreach. He’s going big with executive action, damn the consequences. And he’s doing so on divisive issues from gun control to immigration. On New Year’s Eve, his Homeland Security Department announced new rules boosting the number of work visas for foreign-born US college graduates — well above the level approved by Congress. This, just weeks after language buried deep in the omnibus spending bill increased visas for working-class immigrants. And as immigration has become a bitter issue on the presidential campaign trail. On gun control, word is that an executive order to expand background checks on certain gun sales will come this week. Look: This issue’s been before Congress for at least two years — and gone nowhere. Worse, Obama’s c...
Snapchat has apologized for approving and promoting an ad which asked users if they “would rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown.” The ad, featured on the California-based social media platform, appeared to reference Brown’s conviction for assaulting Rihanna in his car after a pre-Grammy party in 2009. Rihanna, pictured posing with long red locks, is positioned next to the phrase “Slap Rihanna.” Brown is positioned directly under her, appearing to dance, next to the phrase “Punch Chris Brown.” Shocked Snapchat users took to other social media platforms to express their disgust and question why the ad was created in the first place. A Snapchat spokesperson told Sun Online: “The ad was reviewed and approved in error as it violates our advertising guidelines. We immediately removed the ad last weekend, once we became aware. We are sorry that this happened.” Social media user @TheRoyceMann took a screenshot of the advert on Sunday and tweeted: “Is it just me, or is...
Aclose-up view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere A NASA spacecraft has captured the best views of Jupiter yet, revealing turbulent storms in the north pole. Jupiter’s northern polar region is stormier than expected and appears bluer than the rest of the planet, said mission chief scientist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “This image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter,” he said in a statement. NASA on Friday released a batch of close-up pictures taken by the Juno spacecraft last week when it flew within 2,500 miles of Jupiter’s dense cloud tops. During the rendezvous that took Juno from pole to pole, the solar-powered spacecraft turned on its camera and instruments to collect data. The first glimpse of Jupiter’s poles came in 1974 when Pioneer 11 flew by on its way to Saturn. The detailed pictures taken by Juno look “like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” Bolton said. Juno also sent back unique views of Jup...
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