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.
N25.6 billion was allocated to the oil producing states as the 13 per cent derivation fund. For VAT revenue of N61.18 billion, the Federal Government, after deducting cost of collection of FIRS got N8.8 billion, while states pocketed N29.36 billion and local governments got N20.55 billion.” Adeosun blammed the reduction on the downward turn of crude oil prices in the commodity, and maintained that the government would focus on other non-oil sectors to boast Nigeria’s economy. She said: “Even though the revenues were currently down, non oil revenue is beginning to make up for the shortfall in oil revenue. Ongoing maintenance and the shutdown and shut-in of production for repairs at different terminals during the month continued to impact crude oil and gas revenue negatively. “We don’t have to rely on oil with its price going down and very unstable. We are focusing on revenue from non-oil and you can see impressive N369.882 billion compliance with tax,” she adde...
Apple is expected to show off new iPhones, an updated smartwatch — and maybe some new gear for listening to both — during its annual fall product launch event Wednesday. Hard-core Apple fans will be watching closely for details about the newest features coming to Apple’s gadgets, from a widely anticipated dual-lens camera for the iPhone to a rumored GPS sensor in the Apple Watch. But even casual users of consumer technology may be interested to see if Apple follows through on reports that it’s eliminating the iPhone’s analog headphone jack, since that could pave the way for a big shift in the way people listen to digital music. Getting rid of the traditional analog jack means future iPhone owners will need earbuds or headphones that use a digital connection, either through a wireless signal like Bluetooth or a cord that fits in the same port used for recharging the device. Apple may ship the next iPhones with an adapter that lets older headsets plug into the charging ...
This year’s Emmy nominations showered a bounty of nominations on three series — two of them with limited runs. “Game of Thrones,” to no one’s surprise, scored the most nominations with 23. But the real reason to celebrate the awards this year is that two of the best entries — “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” and “Fargo” — walked off with 22 and 18 nominations, respectively. Fans of “The Americans” can also rejoice. After being ignored for three of its four seasons, the FX Cold War drama finally racked up five nominations: Best Drama Series, Best Actor in a Drama Series (Matthew Rhys) and Best Actress in a Drama Series (Keri Russell). “The Night Manager,” a British limited series adapted from the John Le Carre novel, received an astonishing 12 nominations, including acting nods for its stars Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman. “Downton Abbey” went out in style, picking up 10 nominations, including Best Drama Series and Best Supporting Actress for Dame Ma...
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