Is There No Justice?

On February 7,  after at least a week of my friends and I following and discussing the “verified” status of a Twitter account called VerifiedClinton but lacking the blue verified check from Twitter,  I went to battle against that Twitter account for impersonating Hillary Clinton.  At Still4Hill,  I posted this  first volley:  NOT Official Hillary Clinton and UNverified.

I shared the post in the usual places on Facebook and Twitter and also specifically directed the tweet to  Vote_Hillary which had been touting it as genuinely Hillary Clinton’s official Twitter account.  I was immediately blocked after being told in no uncertain terms that it was really Hillary.

In the ensuing weeks, my homegirls and I kept an eye on the bogus account.   Tuesday morning, “Verified” was advertising a Q & A with Hillary herself.  Since the account was not Hillary, and this was fraud, I did a little detective work and called him on it.  You can see the process here.  Pay special attention to the comments thread.  That is where the mystery was solved.    Hillary Clinton’s Twitter Impersonator @VerifiedClinton is a Man – See His Picture Here.

Here is what happened next.  Note To Potential Hillary Clinton Impersonators: Don’t Even THINK About It!

The VerifiedClinton account is down.  So I moseyed over to Twitter a little while ago to see how the VerifiedClinton takedown was going and saw this tweet.

VOTE HILLARY ‏@VOTE_HILLARY

FYI Hillary Tweeters — @VerifiedClinton is a FAKE TWITTER and Twitter FINALLY Shut it Down Today After 3 Months. #HillaryClinton

Thing is,  Vote_Hillary, which is associated with GlobalYouthJustice,  still has me blocked for saying VerifiedClinton was fake.    Where is the justice in that?

This blog began in order to wage, and has largely been devoted to,  defense – defense of Hillary and other women.  Occasionally,  we have celebrated women in the trenches fighting the good fight like the Nuns on the Bus and Karen Finney outing ALEC.   It never occurred to me that I would need to defend myself, however, I feel I have been treated unfairly by Vote_Hillary when my sisters and I were proven correct.   It is especially ironic that I was summarily blocked by a fellow Hillary supporter who ignored the very valid reasons I gave for my argument.

So I  wanted Vote_Hillary‘s followers to know exactly how just GlobalYouthJustice is.    I was not even given the courtesy of a hearing.  I was slammed and blocked – as I remain tonight.   I was right.  VerifiedClinton was neither verified nor genuine, but by all means, Vote_Hillary, shoot first and aim later.  Perfect way to win and gather Hillary supporters.

Hillary Clinton, We’ve Got Your Back!

As the Secretary of State has, after a serious series of health issues culminating an a disturbing blood clot in her head,   returned to D.C. to oversee the State Department transition,  there are articles floating around the interwebs that take a decidedly nasty position vis á vis her performance as Secretary of State, her recent health scare, and her return to work.  I have ignored them until today when I read one that was so reprehensibly acidic as to completely dissolve all of my self-restraint.

The Seattle Times ran an op-ed by syndicated columnist Froma Harrop that made my blood boil.

Can Hillary Clinton pace herself?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton works hard, writes Froma Harrop, but doesn’t working smart mean pacing oneself so that you don’t fall apart in the last mile of the marathon? Clinton was asking for it.

OK, let’s start there.  What originally felled the Secretary of State was a norovirus, very contagious, and no amount of “pacing” guards one against it.   She was “asking for it?”  Really?  Yes, let’s blame the victim.  For Ms. Harrop’s information there is a serious outbreak of norovirus in the northeast right now competing with the near-epidemic flu outbreak that is filling hospitals in 47 states.  Were these victims asking for it?

During one famous 48-hour period, she met with Palestinian officials in Abu Dhabi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and, after doing an all-nighter in Morocco, a group of Arab leaders.

Of course, she got sick. Who wouldn’t?

Completely ignoring the fact that she did not fall ill on the heels of this particular trip,  Ms. Harrop also betrays her ignorance of the effect of the all-nighter which resulted in a brilliant speech delivered the next day to Arab elders that foreshadowed events that began unfolding in Tunisia a year later.  In her Forum for the Future speech on November 3, 2009, Secretary Clinton demonstrated a familiarity with Arab populations, borne of her insistence on meeting with civil society at every stop in her travels.  She conveyed to the elders the need for changes,  economic, political, and even cultural, which she outlined, without which regimes would fall.  Indeed, her message unheeded (perhaps resented), in December 2010 the dominoes began to topple.

Lots of otherwise healthy Americans come down with a nasty bug after just one transatlantic fight to London. Add to that constant time-zone changes, rich banquets, minimal exercise, lack of sleep and stress-filled meetings. Clinton wasn’t there to stroll around museums. What’s not cute about all this is the underlying — shall we say? — irresponsibility of so overstuffing the agenda.

Yes, as I said above, the overstuffing, which typically consisted of Town Halls, “Townterviews,” meetings with civil and business groups, opposition parties,  women’s organizations, in addition to the routine formalities in the ministerial halls, that “irresponsible” packing of her schedule is how she knew what those Arab elders did not – the grievances among their own populations – the young, the women.   Very irresponsible, Mme. Secretary.  For shame!  Sacrificing yourself for the voiceless that way!  Tsk – tsk – tsk!

All that racing around Mideast capitals sometimes took on the air of a personal endurance test rather than effective management of foreign policy. (You’ll note that the Arab-Israeli conflict remains unresolved.)

Why this charge is leveled mystifies me, and it is not Harrop alone who has brought it up.  Every Secretary of State since the creation of the State of Israel has been called upon to deal with this conflict.  It is part of the job.

Make no mistake: Clinton has been a fine secretary of state. Few would argue otherwise. Still, we’re kind of lucky there wasn’t a major new international crisis in December.

Telegram: She was working from home the whole time. She was on the phone with her counterparts in other countries, with her staff, and she both read the ARB Report and wrote an extensive cover letter to accompany the report to Congress while she was home.  The letter is unmistakeably Hillary Clinton’s work – if you know her work.  It is not clear that Ms. Harrop knows anything much about her at all.

It pains me to bring up the woman angle here, but you wonder whether a man would have overscheduled to the point of collapse.

Yes, well, it pains me that you brought this up, too, Ms. Harrop.  The collapse was due to dehydration from a virus that is attacking many right now and against which there is no defense.  You make it sound like she collapsed from exhaustion.  Not the case. As to men performing in this role, your chance is coming up! I trust you will be observing Secretary Kerry with the same care and detail  you have afforded Secretary Clinton (my tongue deeply in my cheek).

It’s no small irony that Clinton’s recent illness has led some Democrats eager for a strong female presidential candidate in 2016 to start looking beyond Hillary.

*Sigh* As if she owes this country or the Democratic Party another minute of service.  The irony is that so many of those calling her name are the Super Delegates from 2008 that either supported Obama over her or, worse, switched allegiances early in the 2008 primaries.   What, exactly, does Hillary Clinton owe any of them?

While she will never embody the cool and outward serenity of Barack Obama, Clinton didn’t have to become the spinning top that put her in a sick bed.  Even there, she noted — not without pride — her difficulty in becoming a “compliant patient.” If Clinton does run for president, she must show more dedication to self-preservation. Martyrs don’t necessarily make great managers.

This is way outside the foul line.  Hillary’s work ethic was one of the reasons  President Obama cited for nominating her in the first place.  Hillary Clinton has given many brilliant speeches as Secretary of State, but what her loyalists know about her is that she is a supremely well-organized woman of action.  “Spinning top” indeed!  And “martyr?”  Seriously?  Last I saw she was back on the job with her bright, sunny smile.

As for great management, she has completely transformed the State Department, streamlined operations among agencies,  and brought it into the 21st century with her QDDR and 21st Century Statecraft, but then I would not expect such a dabbler in things Hillary Clinton to be aware of that.

Finally, the hideous sketch that accompanies the op-ed, gaunt, wrinkled,  exhausted,  bears no resemblance to the actual Hillary Clinton who returned to her office this week looking like this.

She looks lovely.  We’ve got your back, Hillary, and we always will.

Cross-posted at Still 4 Hill.

FOX News Attacks Hillary and ClintonLand Bites Back

In the continual tornadic swirl surrounding Hillary Clinton which is borne of clashing fronts of information and misinformation,  you really need to be careful, Dorothy.  The storms could stir up a nest of bayou vipers.  Or a goddess might rise from the furious clouds and throw lightning at you.

While those of us here were worried sick about our Hillary this week,  FOX News* continued, in fact worsened, their outrageous attacks on our girl saying she would go to any length, including developing a life-threatening blood clot, to avoid testifying about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

Since we were all preoccupied with her condition,  I left those attacks on the sidelines earlier this week.  We just wanted her safe and healthy, so my attitude (and probably yours) was “Screw them!”   We simply wanted not to lose her!  God, I was worried!  Now that her condition has improved and she is looking forward to returning to work (an understatement according to Victoria Nuland who said today, “…she is raring to go… “), we can take a step back to the atrocious remarks that echoed all over FOX News about the genesis of Mme. Secretary’s health crisis.

The malicious and cold-hearted comments did not sit well with those who know our Hillary.  James Carville rose like a cottonmouth from the bayou, as Politico reports.

James Carville: Hillary Clinton haters ‘inhumane’

By KEVIN CIRILLI | 1/4/13 5:57 PM EST

James Carville slammed the “inhumane, idiotic” critics who questioned the legitimacy of Hillary Clinton’s recent head injury and said it was “duly noted” inside Clinton-land.

“What kind of human being is going to think like that with everything going on with concussions, head injuries? The fact the woman was dehydrated from the fact that she’d been overseas so much — I just don’t know, and some of these people I know and I get along with,” Carville said Friday in a CNN interview.

Read more >>>>

With Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word,  the goddess, Karen Finney,   let loose with a torrent of well-aimed lightening bolts to insta-burn to a crisp each and every opprobrious sound bite, and she was glorious!

Wasn’t she magnificent?

Having realized that by polishing my second floor furniture (a rare occurrence) two days earlier,  I may well have caused Sandy to blow through that area, breaking windows and walls, and that by moving the shovels we used to scoop the plaster up back to their rightful place in the cellar I probably caused last week’s snow dump, I think I just might be a witch and  Hillary attackers should beware of me too (as soon as I can fine-tune my powers not to backfire on me).  You just don’t want Hillary’s people (especially Hillary’s women) mad at you.  Anything can happen.

Cross-posted at Still4Hill.

*Exception: Greta van Susteren

Malala Day

‘Malala Day’ marked in Pakistan, amid security fears

By Reuters

As Pakistan marked “Malala Day” in a global day of support for the teenager shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education, security fears in her hometown meant her schoolmates could not honor her in public.

Taliban hit men shot Malala Yousafzai on her school bus a month ago in Mingora in Pakistan’s north-western Swat Valley in a cold-blooded murder attempt for the “crime” of campaigning for girls’ rights to go to school.

Read more >>>>

Krauthammer Misled – Hillary Did Not Blame The Video

Cross-posted at Still4Hill.

Offline most of the day, I was unaware that Charles Krauthammer’s nasty and misleading attack on Hillary Clinton had buzzed around the interwebs all morning.   You would think, from reading his words, that Hillary Clinton blamed the video for the attack on the Benghazi consulate that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.  That was his implication. That was not the case.  She did make a reference to that video in the context of demonstrations at several U.S. Embassies in the region.  She did not, however,  tie that video to the attack on the consulate as she spoke at Andrews AFB beside the caskets on September 14.  In fact, quoting Mahmoud Abbas,  she referred to it as an act of terror.   I hope that before people believe a misrepresentation of what she said, they will read her words and/or watch the video.

Hillary Clinton at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony to Honor Those Lost in Attacks in Benghazi, Libya

Karen Finney: Catching Flies With Honey On MSNBCTV

If you have had enough of the blowhard, bloviating, spewing, anger of anchors (the usual suspects and a few new ones) during this electoral season you might find Karen Finney a pleasant change-of-pace.   Filling in for Martin Bashir on Bashir Live this week at MSNBC’s 4 p.m. (EDT) time slot, she she been a breath of fresh air.  Sure, she addresses many of the same issues as the loudmouths do,  but there is  a lot to be said for a musical voice, a dazzling smile,  and graciousness.  If you have not caught up with the beautiful job she is doing, there is still time.   One more round tomorrow at 4.   If you cannot be home, set your DVR.

MSNBC should give her her own time slot.  Ratings would soar!

American Nuns v. The Vatican: A Battle Ensues

The Department of Homegirl Security (DeHoS) took a stand solidly behind the Nuns on the Bus nearly two months ago.  They are a handful of sisters with a social conscience who embarked on a tour in June to educate voters and politicians alike on the social, practical, and moral  implications of the proposed Ryan budget as well as particular campaign platforms.

If you thought, however, that the Nuns on the Bus were some kind of radical, breakaway faction, think again.

US nuns call for more dialogue with the Vatican

Seth Perlman / AP

Outgoing President of The Leadership Conference of Women Religious Sister Pat Farrell, right, and president-elect Sister Florence Deacon, left, listen to questions from reporters Friday in St. Louis.

By Becky Bratu, NBC News

American nuns under fire from the Vatican said they will continue their dialogue with Catholic bishops “for as long as possible,” the group announced Friday as it wrapped a week of discussions and prayer at its yearly national assembly in St. Louis, Mo.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization representing about 80 percent of the 57,000 nuns in the United States, ”will reconsider if [they are] forced to compromise the integrity of [their] mission.”

Hours before the scheduled press conference, the organization’s president addressed its members, urging the sisters to be “truthful, but gentle and absolutely fearless,” according to the National Catholic Reporter.

Read more >>>>

Did you see what I saw?   They represent roughly eighty percent – that’s 80% – that is  eight of every ten of all the nuns in the U.S.  And they are at odds with the Vatican.  Put another way,  eight of every ten American nuns disagree with the pope, and the disagreement is over social issues.  It is about challenges, in this economy,  to families at risk,  and their ability to make decisions about how many children they can afford to raise, and how they can limit risks to the family they already have.

The nuns have squared off, and tonight, for me,  epiphany struck.  A late, lamented colleague of mine and I often discussed the American Catholic Church.   We agreed that it was a different church from the Roman Catholic Church in that Americans of all religions are also essentially Protestant. (For a larger discussion of this see Nuns on the Bus.)

It was the late-1980s.  We were  at a Krystalnacht memorial symposium at a Catholic women’s college.  When the panel discussion ended, we hung back in the all-purpose room while the sisters came in to prepare for Mass.  As they did so, I turned to her and asked, “Would you have a problem with any one of those women saying Mass?”  She said no.  But I felt  we were second-class members of our Church, up against the men, and they would decide – against us.

American bishops are between a rock and a hard place.  The Vatican is intransigent, but the nuns are resolved.  The bishops have always sort of run an American Church, quietly and under the Vatican’s radar.   My friend and I agreed that there could eventually be a schism.  Here is where we were reprehensibly wrong.  We thought it would be the bishops.

That was my epiphany tonight.  Of course it will not be the men.  Why didn’t I see that?  It will be the women.  It will be the nuns.  The ones who taught us girls to sing the whole Mass when the boys went to altar boy practice because they knew we were envious that the boys were learning Latin, so they decided to teach us more Latin than the boys knew.   Those were feminist nuns.  They did not want us to be second-class.

Today’s nuns were my choirmates.  Whether the issue is who gets to learn Latin (not really an issue anymore),  serve Mass (girls can now, thank you Vatican II), SAY Mass, or who decides how many children a family will have,  these nuns believe the answer lies in equality and access to current technology and medicine that should be universally available and used according to personal conscience and common sense.  Serving as teachers, nurses, and social workers to the poor,  they know the consequences of subjugation.  They are not second-class religious. The Vatican is dealing with equals.  The nuns will not be bowed.

Before this battle is over,  I think we will see a woman lying face down on the floor taking Holy Orders.  But even if we do not,  the American Catholic Church will either have the blessing of the Vatican or have broken away.  The Church needs vocations.  They are out there, in earrings and pearls.  They already tend flocks and know their needs.  They are eminently qualified to pastor.  They already do.  They actually know how the flock works, what endangers it, and how to protect it better than the current shepherds do.

P.S. As I was writing this, the breaking news was that tomorrow Paul Ryan will be announced as  Romney’s running mate.  The sky is not falling – yet. But it might be  a good idea to just smash that glass ceiling once and for all and put a leader on the top of the Dem ticket.  You know – someone who can blast that GOP ticket to Mars along with that Ryan budget.  You know who I mean.