ZOMG, she’s dancing!!!

Is Hillary Clinton becoming an embarrassment as Secretary of State?

The pictures of Hillary Clinton dancing the night away in Colombia during the Summit of the Americas are now all over Twitter, and were first reported by ABC News:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked back Saturday night, dancing and drinking beer at a local hotspot after a day of summit meetings in Cartagena.

The AFP/Getty got images of the Secretary dancing at Café Havana with her hands up in the air and swigging a local brew with friends.

Clinton and President Obama are spending the weekend in the resort town for the Summit of the Americas, along with the leaders of 33 Latin American countries.

The overwhelmingly liberal US media is treating the story as a bit of fun, with the usually austere Mrs Clinton seen as letting her hair down. But I suspect that a lot of US taxpayers will see it differently – as a senior government official having a jolly time on an official overseas junket at taxpayers’ expense. And this was hardly a display of good judgment at a time when nearly 13 million Americans are unemployed, and US soldiers are laying their lives on the line every day in Afghanistan. In an effortless display of leading from behind, Hillary was partying in Colombia while the Taliban were about to launch a wave of terror attacks in Kabul.

It is hard to imagine Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright or Henry Kissinger “livin’ la vida loca” on the world stage. This was less an example of “smart power” than a boozy nightclub audition for the sixth season of Jersey Shore. Hillary Clinton’s Colombian antics are an embarrassment for a high-level cabinet member on official duty, and have lowered the office of Secretary of State. Not exactly the sort of image the federal government should be projecting at a time of widespread public disillusionment with Washington excesses.

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ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???

Hillary was with a group of twelve people. The group ordered a dozen beers, two shots of whiskey and some water. Hillary was photographed drinking a beer. Apparently she danced a little bit too. Hillary stayed there for about 30 minutes before leaving.

Even Reverend Moore would cut her some slack

One of the commenters to the article put it best:

Niles, I feel horribly for you. All of those years at Yale, all of that solemn scholarly achievement, and for what? To spend your working years in the sewer below the Public Square peddling rancid political non-truths? That has to be depressing. At least it helps one understand why you would be so critical of Hillary Clinton, as she actually has the guts to put herself in the real world to try and accomplish positive change, while you collect your paychecks, toss your absurd brickbats, and lament your own unimportance.

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Niles Gardiner

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Judge not

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Zimmerman’s lawyer: I want a new judge

George Zimmerman’s attorney on Monday asked the judge in the case to step down because of a possible conflict of interest.

On Friday, O’Mara told Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler he was on the verge of asking her to step aside. Her husband is the law partner of Mark NeJame, who currently works for CNN as an analyst on the Zimmerman case.

O’Mara told reporters that he met with Zimmerman on Monday, and they discussed what to do about the judge and decided to ask for a new one.

“What I don’t want to happen,” O’Mara told reporters Monday, “is to wait a month or two then find out what we thought was a potential conflict is an actual conflict.”

Chief Judge Alan Dickey confirmed the filing late Monday afternoon.

Recksiedler is almost certain to grant the motion. Under Florida law, all a person needs to show is a reasonable belief that the judge might not be fair.

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This should be a slam-dunk. Most states also allow a peremptory challenge which comes in handy if your case gets assigned to a hanging judge.

Meanwhile, the media wants to unseal all the files in People v. Zimmerman. I guess they don’t think there has been enough pretrial publicity yet. As much as I would like to seal the files, I think this motion should be denied in order to preserve what is left of Zimmerman’s right to a fair trial. A change of venue is pretty much a sure thing already.

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Proglodytes 2008: “Shut UP, Mom! I Know What I’m Doing!’ Proglodytes 2011: “Um……Mom?”

It has amused me to see all the hints and even exhortations in the press that Hillary Clinton will be both offered, and accept, the VP slot for 2012. I don’t claim to know Hillary’s mind, but given their treatment of her in 2008, I’d like to imagine that conversation going something like this:

Journolisters: Mom?

Hillary: Yeah. Where are you?

J: We’re in the parking lot at Whole Foods in the middle of Virginia. I think. The recent past is kind of a blur. There were some styrofoam columns, and fainting….. and then I’m not sure where we went after that. We weren’t really paying attention, to be honest.

H: And?

J: See… the thing is, we need a ride home. And money to tow the car. And probably a new transmission.

H: I see. And didn’t I tell you that crappy car was in no shape to do an 800 mile trip?

J: Yeah, but….see, we hit this skid patch coming around Route 2010, and next thing we knew Barry had us in the middle of a cornfield, and half the damn undercarriage of the car was gone!  And…and then Timmy somehow got stuck in a well, and Ben started puking up green stuff, and Michelle kept spending all the trip money on bling….  And Axelrod, OMG Axelrod  has completely flipped out and keeps wandering around mumbling that we are someplace called FourYearsAgo Avenue, so we had to tie him in the trunk!  And Eric is high or something and keeps trying to buy fucking GUNS for these dudes I am pretty sure are drug lords, and we didn’t realize gas was going to get so expensive, and we are broke, and……..Mooooom, this is BAD! You have to help us!

H: And I seem to recall that you are over 21 (as you kept reminding me), and didn’t need your stinkin’ old has-been not-trendy mother to tell you it was a bad idea to go careening off across the country half-drunk on hopenchange with no money in your pockets and a piece of shit vehicle with 3 bald tires.

J: Well, yeah, Mom, but you HAVE to come pick us up, because there’s some guys hanging around here who don’t look too friendly – I think the ringleader is called Mitt, and he keeps smirking and pointing at our crapped-out car….and we are getting really nervous here, Mom!

H: Where is the nearest bus station?

J: It’s…..um….. I think it’s around the intersection of 2012 and High Unemployment St.

H: Then I suggest you start walking.

J: But…but….Mo-ooooooom!

*click*

The Fine Art of Trolling for Women

She's a maniac, maniac, oh noes!!

Earlier today my friend Cynthia and I were discussing her interactions with Maha of Mahablog. I wouldn’t recommend clicking that link unless you’re in firm control of your emotions. Maha is Barbara O’Brien, the About Buddhism writer for About.com. Ironically enough in light of that, she runs Mahablog, which is the one of the stinkiest kool aide waterholes I’ve ever had the displeasure to revisit. Extremely pro-Obama, O’Brein is also one of the left-identifying women who thinks she speaks for the vast majority of women, except of course for the 514 she thinks stay at home to take care of the kids. She lives in NYC, so I do understand why she’s fallen victim to the noise machine. It’s all she can hear.

Apparently she and Cynthia got into it after I dropped a link to Cynthia’s latest about the exciting demise of traditional leftist feminism into a snickering post about how Republicans couldn’t possibly win the war for women, as the WSJ suggested. O’Brien is still of the mind that Democrats have got this woman thing, the result of 2010 (and 2004) notwithstanding. She doesn’t see that the ground has shifted and that her communication style is offensive to vast swaths of the American middle. If she did, she would swing very fast into a tone of reasonableness and be strategizing for how she can effectively sell her side to American women. Instead she’s still laughing at the possibility, even though she was just shown in 2010 that it could be done, that Republicans could win so many women that Democrats would lose and lose hard.

This led to a discussion with Cynthia about the fine art of trolling for women, which is something I’ve been engaged in unofficially (and on my own) for almost two years now. But it’s not something I’ve ever talked about much, or written about. It struck me that maybe it’s time I did. Maybe there are others who would like to join me or strike out on their own to attempt to insert their own POV into the narrative. I developed this idea on my own, but it was born of the genius of the Obama camp’s employment of Cass Sunstein’s group polarization study in the 2008 campaign. Now, I’m sure you’re wonder trolling for women? WTF is that?

Trolling for Women involves dummy accounts and dedicated time spent at opposition headquarters. It can be as simple as dropping a link into comments at one of these places, or it can involve the long-term development of characters at some of the most powerful blogs, like Daily Kos. The purpose is to persuade, confuse, or  intimidate depending upon the audience. At the Washington Post, one wants to keep a reasonable tone because the audience is going to be all over the place and you want to be persuasive. At a place like Daily Kos, you might want to write a diary that stealthily introduced opposition memes into the conversation (being conscious to avoid buzzwords from the opposition). The reason is because intimidating them does no good and they are beyond persuasion. Confusing them is a good end result. But you might also want to become a diarist known for writing about the moderate or liberal cause that is near and dear to your own heart. I have a longstanding account with a male name at Daily Kos that I use to write about pro-woman things. I do this to provide another example to that very needy audience of a male supportive of women and feminist issues.

At a place like Mahablog, where you have true believers and dangerous anti-feminist narratives floating around, you want to intimidate and confuse if you can. You want to go toe to toe as strongly opinionated women and you want to win. It doesn’t matter if Maha or her regular commenters are persuaded, that’s not winning. Winning is modeling that you won’t back down and how to not back down for any chance readers, or casual or young readers who are not entirely persuaded to her side. This is a good way to drop links for those readers as well. Believe me, there a lot of moderate people out there and a few on the left as well who would breathe a sigh of relief if what has traditionally been called feminism died. I left the link for them. But I also left the comment I did with Cynthia’s link because it fed Maha’s (and her regular audience’s) paranoia, wasted her time, and likely raised her blood pressure. Why would I want to do that?