It's 3am and people are trying to kill and/or bankrupt your children.

Alright, time to make an attempt at a real post.

Let's start with Hillary Clinton's new "3 a.m." It's the same as her ad proposing that a world crisis could erupt in the middle of the night, only "this time the crisis is economic." Cut to shots of blue tinted people looking at bills and mortgage papers. Because there's nothing more romantic than financial hand wringing by moonlight. And then we get the resolution shot of Clinton wearing glasses (with desk lamp lit!) as a knock-off John Williams score swells in the background.

It's hard to imagine how an economic crisis happens all of sudden, out of the blue, in the middle of night when everyone's asleep. But presumably the crisis ends around 4:15 am, after Clinton flies to the Economic Evil Doer's secret mountaintop lair, punches him the gut, gives him a stern lecture about responsible financial planning and returns the swindled money back to the bank accounts of citizens everywhere. When America wakes up at 6:30, it's like the whole thing never happened. Clinton manages to fly back through her bedroom window just before her advisors enter for her daily briefing. "Awfully quiet night, eh Madame President? Did you sleep well?"

"Oh, I slept just fine," she says with a wink to no one in particular.

Pretty airtight argument.

The image of Clinton as some kind of bureaucratic supergenius is pretty ridiculous. This "red phone" series of ads is certainly in line with her campaign's strategy of "say it enough times and eventually people will assume it's true." The experience bluff is wearing thin. She finally got called out on it over the Bosnia lie, yet a swath of voters continue to buy their pitch. I don't understand how polls show that people trust her more on health care (when she's already fucked it up once) and the economy (when NAFTA was a hallmark of the Clinton administration and is about as popular as bubonic plague among white blue collar workers). Things seemed to have cooled off between her and Obama for the moment. But I imagine things are going to get nasty as April 22 draws near.

........