Did you hear the big news? Hillary’s on Twitter. Yep, she went live at noon Monday, making jokes about her hair and pantsuits and, according to one breathless report, “fueling speculation” that she’ll run for president by saying her future job is “TBD”— to be determined.
Bill and Chelsea chipped in, too. OMG, stop the presses!
There was another bit of breaking Clinton news that same day, but nothing nearly as important.
It seems there were some hooker scandals at the State Department during her watch, and that one of our ambassadors also has a sick fondness for other people’s children.
But all the investigations got quashed by higher-ups, according to an agency report, so it’s almost like they never happened.
In fact, as far as most of the news media are concerned, they never did happen.
The timing of the two news developments could be an amazing coincidence, or you could remember Rule No. 1 about the Clintons: There are no coincidences.
As Hillary herself once said about things too odd to be true, “If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by itself.”
You could say the same about her being on Twitter just as the sordid sex revelations were breaking. She didn’t start tweeting out of the blue.
The whistleblower ratting out the dirty diplos and her lawyer are charging “coverup” and seem to be on solid ground. Aurelia Fedenisn, a former senior inspector in the State Department, produced notes of higher-ups removing all the troubling accusations from official reports.
One probe reportedly got quashed by Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. That could also be an amazing coincidence — Mills earlier was accused by a Benghazi whistleblower of retaliating against him for talking to congressional investigators about the terrorist attack.
If both claims are true, Mills has a nasty habit of freelancing, or she deserves her reputation as Hillary’s enforcer.
Either way, the Clinton 2016 presidential quest is off to a rocky start. During her tenure, our Libyan ambassador was murdered, the first American diplomat killed in more than 30 years. And it happened on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, a day that should automatically lead to increased security, not less.
Clinton’s congressional testimony on the attack was noteworthy only for her testy outburst of “What difference at this point does it make?” That was her answer about why she falsely blamed the whole thing on an anti-Muslim video.
Then it emerged that her spokesperson argued against any mention of terrorism in the administration talking points, saying it was necessary to satisfy “my building’s leadership.” Now, who could she mean by that?
The Benghazi sequence was a bummer for Clinton’s poll ratings, which took a subsequent tumble. The newest allegations that she oversaw a global bawdy house can’t help.
At least in the real world.
But in the celebrity culture world where Clinton mostly lives, none of it matters. She is famous for being famous, a “great” secretary of state whose greatness is asserted as fact despite an actual record that is mediocre at best.
She spent four years flying around the globe, but I’m still waiting to learn of a single significant country she converted from adversary to friend. I’ll lower the bar and settle for an insignificant country she helped move into our column.
There aren’t any, large or small, important or not. Nor are there any big ideas or doctrines that would qualify as a legacy vision.
There was just her, traveling and waving and, now it appears, working hard to keep the lid on anything that would make her look bad.
It doesn’t matter, that’s all history. Besides, did you hear? Hillary’s on Twitter!
Small-biz ‘fans’ are killing ’em
Hardly a day goes by when the city’s Democratic mayoral candidates don’t swear by their love for small-business owners. Like birds on a wire, they sing of their dedication to the bodega man, the pizza maker and the green grocer.
Then they stick it to ’em.
Facing a hike in the minimum wage, a new sick-leave bill, a proposed ban on selling tobacco to anyone under 21 and being forced to move cigarettes from display counters, small-business owners in New York are getting more love than they can handle. They get hammered by inspectors who treat minor violations as the cause of pandemics, even as competing street vendors escape both rent and regulation.
If they survive all those assaults, business owners can look forward to the tender mercies of ObamaCare and Mayor Bloomberg’s continuing push to outlaw large sugary sodas.
In these ways, small businesses share the schizophrenic quality of political pandering with the entire middle class. The pols know that middle-class neighborhoods, with their families and local merchants, are the glue that holds the city together.
But the pols can’t help themselves. While professing love, they raise costs on small businesses with their high taxes and left-wing social engineering, as if the businesses have a pot of extra money gathering dust.
The pols are then genuinely shocked when the businesses fold, lay off workers or pass the burden along by raising prices and driving up the cost of living for everybody else.
Think of this destructive cycle the next time you hear a candidate say he wants to make the city more “affordable.” Ask if that means he is willing to reduce the crushing burden of government on all New Yorkers.
If not, find another candidate.
Appeasing hate
An Orthodox Jewish friend tells this story. Not long after Muslim riots rocked Sweden, he was walking in Copenhagen’s central commercial district when two police officers pulled up beside him and asked if he was Danish. He said no, and they responded by saying he should remove his yarmulke for his own safety. Otherwise, they added, he might be attacked.
My friend objected, saying he never removes his cap, and the cops said it was his choice. They drove off, leaving him furious at their casual surrender to anti-Semitism.
As predicted, within minutes, he was taunted by young Muslims. He kept his yarmulke on, but hopped into a cab to avoid trouble.
So it goes in so-called Western civilization.
A mon‘O’logue
There he goes again. When he’s caught in a jam, President Obama likes to say, “I welcome a conversation” about whatever problem he’s facing at the moment. He did it on mushrooming government surveillance, but his press secretary suggests Obama won’t change his mind. Jay Carney insisted the president has found the right “balance between security and privacy.”
In other words, the conversation is over.
Green monster
Not all environmentalists are equal. On Manhattan’s West 57th Street the other day, a woman driving a Prius with New Jersey plates opened her window and dumped a cup of garbage on the street.
Green is as green does.