In a miracle of modern medical science — or what some are calling “antibiotics and three days of rest” — Hillary Clinton Returned to The Campaign Trail (mandatory cliché brought to you by the Mandatory Cliché Council) Thursday after a bout of pneumonia, and to prove she’s all better, gave two speeches and a press conference. But is it all an act????? Was it her body double?????

At her first appearance, at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, Clinton came onstage to James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” which of course was a far better musical choice than Donald Trump’s constant use of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which really should be taken as a warning but isn’t.

America feels like a place where no one has a claim on a fixed identity any more, not, at least, until he or she becomes famous. At that point they harden, not into marble, but into wax. The permanently famous – Jack Nicholson, Martha Stewart – enter the wax museum.

This election is the first wax museum election in American history. At issue is whether the American voter will see beyond the logic of the wax museum, and choose (this is the new meme in the liberal American press) a flawed but normal candidate or an abnormal and dangerous one.
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Ms. Clinton has become, for both left and right, a stand-in for every anxiety we have about a fluid, maybe even collapsing world. To the left, she is a “neoliberal,” selling us down the rivers of global finance. To the right, she is the very devil itself, selling (white) American interests down the river to foreigners of one kind or another.

As a pragmatist standing between the fluidity of global capital, hyper-capitalism and the needs of local America, she can be neither fluid nor solid. I feel for her as I felt for her then. She is forced by impossible circumstances to be this awful simulacrum. To be true to reality, she has to be made of wax.

Images of Native Americans made by non-Natives have a problematic history. During the 19th and early 20th centu­ries, ethnographers often used photos to document and romanticize the last traces of the New World’s “dying cul­tures.” Native Americans survived, but the tradition lives on: Posed images and media stereotypes continue to reduce indigenous peoples to vessels for the American imagination.

Photographer Matika Wilbur, a member of the Tulalip and Swinom­ish tribes, aims to change this. Three years ago, she set out on an ambitious undertaking, a vast road trip across America to photograph members of all 562 of America’s federally-recognized tribes. (That number is now 566.) The first part of this ongoing project was recently displayed in Wilbur’s first solo museum show, Photographic Pres­ence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Wash. The show featured 40 portraits chosen from Wil­bur’s collection, which so far includes images from the more than 200 tribes she visited in the course of traveling 80,000 miles around the western United States. A fine art book series is also forthcoming from the University of Washington Press.

Shouts could be heard Friday afternoon across the encampment at Standing Rock when the long-anticipated U.S. District Court ruling was announced. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s attempt to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline had failed. The judge would allow construction to move forward.

Then, just 20 minutes later, the ceremonial grounds at the camp erupted in cheers and drumming, people raised fists in the air, some clutching braids of sweetgrass. An order had come from three federal agencies to turn a defeat into what seemed like a stunning success —one with implications across Indian Country, and well beyond. A late afternoon rainstorm pelted the crowds, but spirits were flying high as elders, mothers with babies, young activists, all danced and sang, all celebrating, drums echoing across the camp.

“It truly was an interesting event in the universe,” said Faith Spotted Eagle, member of the Yankton Souix and an elder with the Brave Heart Society. “In one minute we had the judge ruling against us, which we expected, and then all of sudden, the United States issued a memorandum that said the whole issue needed to be looked at. That is major. We affected a nation.”

Dallas Goldtooth agreed. The move is evidence of the power of nonviolent direct action, said Goldtooth, an organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Throughout the course of her political career, Hillary Clinton has been routinely accused of one irredeemable sin: failing to smile.

From GOP chairman Reince Priebus to conservative commentator Dick Morris to an infinite parade of egg avatars on Twitter, everyone is deeply emotionally invested in getting the candidate to lighten up a little. She's running for president of the United States — and a true commander in chief knows just how to lol.

It's time for Clinton to finally listen to the men who've told her to "smile" her whole life. Clinton has probably always wanted to smile and simply needed a strong man to teach her how.

So here are helpful lessons from some of her most incisive critics.

Nominees of the 16th Annual Native American Music Awards have donated their songs to a free compilation CD entitled, Water is Life, in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's efforts to protect their land, water and sacred sites from the Dakota Access Pipeline. The free CD, Water is Life, features a variety of artist contributions from all tribal nations and music styles that can be downloaded online on the Native American Music Awards website at http://www.nativeamericanmusicawards.com/free-cd-download

Featured artists on the CD include: Shelley Morningsong (N. Cheyenne), CC Murdock (Timpanogos), Howard Lyons (Mohawk), Cindy Paul (Metis Cree), Blue Mountain Tribe (Chiricahua Apache), Thana Redhawk (Apache/Cherokee/Aztec/Sioux/Mexica), Steven Rushingwind (Cahuilla/Opata), Rhonda Head (Cree), Conrad Benally (Shoshone Bannock), Darren Thompson (Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior/Chippewa), Jace Martin (Mohawk Six Nations of the Grand River Iroquois), Rockapelli (Chumash/Huichol) and NightShield (Sioux).

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has received an outpouring of support from other Tribes, First Nations, Organizations, Cities, and Businesses who have visited and sent them signed resolutions and letters of support of their efforts against the Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access Pipeline. Mainstream artist, Pharrell Williams, Divergent star Shailene Woodley, Actors Jason Momoa and Leonardo DiCaprio have also expressed their support.

Construction on The Dakota Access Pipeline is still underway. The planned $3.7 billon pipeline would transport approximately 470,000 barrels of crude oil per day, from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery near Chicago. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe doesn’t want the Dakota Access Pipeline to go on their tribal lands or beneath the Missouri river, fearing it will endanger the reservation’s drinking water and ancient burial sites.

Last night, for the second time in less than a week, the candidates for Montana’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives met to debate, arguing policy and social issues, and making their case to voters.

Incumbent Republican Ryan Zinke faced off against Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau at Montana State University Billings.

Libertarian candidate Mike Fellows was invited, but unable to attend because of health issues.

Over the course of the hour-long event, the candidates were peppered with questions on local and international issues by reporters from Yellowstone Public Radio, the Billings Gazette and KULR TV.