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.
SANTIAGO, Cuba — Fidel Castro’s ashes were interred in a private ceremony Sunday morning, ending nine days of mourning for the man who ruled Cuba for nearly half a century. The military caravan bearing his remains in a flag-draped cedar coffin left the Plaza of the Revolution in the eastern city of Santiago at 6:39 a.m. Thousands of people lined the two-mile route to Santa Ifigenia cemetery, waving Cuban flags and shouting “Long live Fidel!” Photographs taken by Cuban state media showed that the interment was presided over by Castro’s younger brother and successor, President Raul Castro, who wore his green military uniform as he placed the older man’s ashes into what appeared to be a niche in his tomb, a simple, grey, round stone about 15 feet high. The niche was then covered by a plaque bearing the single name, “Fidel.” Those in attendance included Castro’s wife, Dalia Soto del Valle, other members of his family and presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel O...
Kudos to Donald Trump for dragging the media spotlight to the flood-ravaged areas around Baton Rouge — and shaming President Obama into belatedly scheduling a visit, though not until next Tuesday. Waters rising in the wake of record rainfalls have killed 13 Louisianians, displaced another 85,000-plus and damaged more than 40,000 homes. It’s the worst disaster to hit the state since Hurricane Katrina — yet it garnered far less attention, from the media or the White House, until Trump announced his trip. Trump is living up to his words in North Carolina the other night: “We are one nation. When one state hurts, we all hurt. We must all work together — to lift each other up.” Hours later, he and running mate Mike Pence were touring battered Baton Rouge. That made the president look like a hypocrite. After all, as a presidential candidate back in 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama slammed George W. Bush as “a president who only saw people from the window of an airplane instead of...
Microsoft will end support for old versions of Internet Explorer on Tuesday — a move that means users of the browser should upgrade to the latest version or install a new browser altogether to avoid security flaws. Microsoft will only continue issuing security updates and bug fixes for Internet Explorer 11, the latest version of the browser, to focus more on the latest version. The older versions of Internet Explorer made up at least 21% of the browser market in December, according to NetMarketShare.com, which tracks statistics for Internet technologies. Windows users should check whether their browser is up-to-date. Those who have set their Windows computers to receive automatic updates are likely already using Internet Explorer 11. Others who find they are still running an older version of the browser may be lacking older upgrades as well, potentially exposing them to viruses or attackers who could steal their information, Microsoft said in a notice. The ...
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