While it's being billed as a "reward" for her work at the State Department, one wonders if it isn't because moving Hillary Clinton's get-it-done attitude wouldn't be helpful on the Senate floor.

Michael Hirsh, writing obnoxiously for Newsweek, thinks that Obama is going about foreign policy all wrong, and that only Secretary Clinton can fix the problem. Well, she could, if only she could let go of one certain pet issue (emphasis mine):

The one hope for forward movement on all these issues may be to rethink them entirely-not just the strategy but the personnel, too. That's not to say Holbrooke, Mitchell, and Co. should go, but their efforts should be subordinated to higher-level engagement, especially from Clinton. The secretary of state must play a much more active role on a regular basis; only Clinton, apart from Obama himself, has the necessary political star power, acumen, and gravitas to make a difference. It's clear that she can no longer afford to allow herself to remain at a strategic distance or to be sidetracked on women's issues, only occasionally parachuting in for ill-briefed appearances as she did in the Mideast.

Silly ladies! Don't we know that the real work of stabilizing a country by empowering a disenfranchised segment of the population will have to wait until we've sufficiently rattled sabres and swung dicks around?

Of course, Hirsh has a recommendation on exactly how to accomplish said dick-swinging:

For example, with additional troops likely to be deployed to Afghanistan soon, it may be wise to seek to negotiate with the Taliban, which we are not doing. At the same time it may be better policy not to negotiate with Tehran, as we are now doing. The West should consider new ways to isolate the discredited regime in Iran and find fresh methods of encouraging the still-insurgent election dissidents.

On the Mideast, perhaps we should drop all pretense of addressing final-status issues that are clearly irresolvable at present and look instead for a long-term interim arrangement[.]

However, Hillary Clinton will not be so easily dissuaded from looking at a different way to promote international peace ad equality.

"Women are key to our being able to resolve all of those difficult conflicts," Mrs. Clinton said in a speech in August. Since then, she has pursued initiatives to help women gain political power, personal safety and enough money to help their communities and countries improve economically and transition to democracy.

"There is nothing that has been more important to me over the course of my lifetime than advancing the rights of women and girls," she said in a Washington speech Nov. 6. "And it is now a cornerstone of American foreign policy."

And:

By elevating the plight of women so publicly, Mrs. Clinton has breathed new life into women's issues on Capitol Hill. Senator John Kerry and Representative William Delahunt, Massachusetts Democrats, are expected soon to introduce legislation to make permanent the ambassadorship Ms. Verveer now holds.

Their measure would also direct the administration to create a five-year strategy that reduces assaults against women and girls in at least 10 nations and creates ways to judge the effectiveness of U.S. aid in advancing the goal.

Clinton would be an asset in either position, so the question is clear: where does she want to be in 2016?

Could Hillary Clinton Replace Biden As Obama's VP? [US News and World Report]
Out With The Envoys [Newsweek]
Advancing Women A Top Clinton Goal [NY Times]

A quick opinion piece in the new New York magazine tries to explain how Hillary rose to such heights:

The sudden Clinton clamor in the media strikes the ear as especially cacophonous in light of how quiet she has been for most of her nine months in her new job. And the sound of silence out of State, in turn, has given rise to a clear conventional wisdom about Hillary's role in Obamaville, which is part of what she was reacting to in her interviews with NBC and ABC this week. The CW, put succinctly, is that Hillary is a virtual nonentity in the administration: that in terms of political status, she ranks in the second tier, and that when it comes to policy sway, she has been out-barked and out-bitten by the pack of alpha dogs that the president has installed around her.

It's easy enough to understand this interpretation of Clinton's standing. After her soap-operatic campaign, the absence of drama around HRC creates cognitive dissonance for the punditocracy and other Beltway tea-leaf readers. Yet the truth is that the conventional wisdom is wrong, I think, in both its particulars and its overall verdict. And not just wrong but illustrative of a set of misapprehensions about how the woman thinks and operates-or, at least, how she's learned to do so, especially with respect to the navigation of new terrain. Indeed, one need only look back as far as her time in the Senate to understand how she now sees and plays the game, and why, on everything from the battle over U.S. policy in Afghanistan to the shaping of her future, she's perfectly likely to win.

Opining that Clinton succeeded in the Senate by "being wonky and learning the ropes", writer John Heilemann sets up the argument that this was all part of Clinton's master plan:

To the outside world, all this laying low has made Clinton look like less of a player. But the reality is almost exactly the opposite. From the outset, Hillary recognized that she could only exercise influence inside the administration if she were trusted by Obama and the people close to him. And although the president himself and Emanuel never had much doubt that she could be a team player, many others in the Obamasphere were supremely skeptical. But no longer. "In terms of loyalty, discretion, and collegiality," says a senior White House official, "she's been everything we could have asked or hoped for."

The unfolding debate over Afghanistan is maybe the most conspicuous example of Hillary's adroitness at working the inside game. Compared with Joe Biden and General Stanley McChrystal, her position has been opaque. But now comes word that Clinton and Gates are lining up on the same side in favor of a middle course in the region-not the full-blown troop surge that the general advocates nor the bare-bones approach that the V.P. favors. By all accounts, the likeliest outcome is that Obama will wind up pursuing the Gates-Clinton split-the-difference. And while no one will ever call it the Hillary doctrine, it will be the kind of quiet win that leads to greater internal power for her in the future.

Playing the inside game works to Clinton's advantage in other ways as well. It's no coincidence, I'd argue, that her popularity has sharply risen in these months when her profile has been lower, when she's been perceived as selflessly working on behalf of her boss. Hillary's greatest political vulnerability has always been the sense among many voters that she is ambition incarnate. That she's forever shimmying up the greasy pole. That everything she does and says is all about her own advancement.

But now Obama has put her in the perfect position to play the good soldier. To say with (almost) a straight face that she's looking forward to retirement, that her White House aspirations are behind her. That all she cares about is doing a good job and serving her new master. And as she does, her approval ratings seem to climb by the day.

By quietly amassing support and power, Clinton established enough a base to start powerfully asserting her opinions and directly challenging her opponents on various subjects. Her comments on the war in Afghanistan show that HRC is about to belt that sacred cow in the mouth:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday the Bush administration never sent enough troops to Afghanistan to defeat the al-Qaida and the Taliban.

In an interview with CNN, Clinton said President George W. Bush and his top advisers were unrealistic about Afghanistan from the invasion in late 2001. She said after skimping on the size of the U.S. force in 2001, the administration then dropped the ball by shifting its focus to Iraq.

Uh-oh, Karl Rove & Co. HRC is back.

And y'all are about to get served.

Poll: Clinton has high job approval [CNN]
Hillary Reborn [New York Magazine]
Hillary Clinton faults Bush on Afghanistan [UPI]

MEGAN: Having spent much of yesterday looking at that shirtless Obama-in-Kailua picture, I gotta say: this White Christmas shit is for the birds.

SPENCER: I saw the view from your kitchen of the snowdrift surrounding your garage. At least one famous blogger emailed me the shirtless Obama photo saying he was "just looking to be as badass as this guy."

MEGAN: I should take one of the front yard, after all the gusty winds yesterday, there was lots of drifting. And I swear there's a segue somewhere in there.

SPENCER: Snow drifts. Drifting. Policy drift... Policy drift tends to be filled in foreign policy by the Pentagon... The Pentagon's played an outsized role in foreign affairs for decades. Hillary Clinton intends to push the State Department back to prominence!

MEGAN: See, I knew there was one in there somewhere... Although I don't know that it was a vacuum at State that led to the Pentagon taking a more prominent — and, one might say, inappropriate role, given its mission — as much as that was a distinct purpose of Bush's (and Cheney's) choices in terms of personnel, funding and who they chose to listen to. Let us also not fail to mention that she's planning on grabbing some turf back from Bill Richardson over at Commerce and Tim Geithner at Treasury:

As Mrs. Clinton puts together her senior team, officials said, she is also trying to carve out a bigger role for the State Department in economic affairs, where the Treasury has dominated during the Bush years.

That last bit, in case it wasn't fleshed out enough for you, since it wasn't, was about China policy.

SPENCER: There's a structural defect at State that creates a vacuum in practice. The State Department doesn't really have an expeditionary culture, meaning it doesn't train its foreign service officers to, say, intervene in tribal disputes that take place far from embassies and consulates. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where that sort of intervention is key to the war efforts, the result is that a 30-year old captain ends up becoming a de facto diplomat without being trained for that mission. More money is useful and needed for the State Department, but it's defects like that that require a shift in department culture, incentives, training, etc.

MEGAN: Which is sort of interesting when you consider that, at the tail end of the Clinton Administration, they reorganized the recruitment structure to make it more difficult to shift personnel between functions — i.e., the cone system.

SPENCER: Ah Richardson. One of the hackiest stories I wrote this year was about Commerce's role in foreign affairs, just in the interest of having something to say about Bill Richardson the day of his announcement that was the slightest bit different than what everyone else was writing. What's the Cone System? I've never heard of that and Crappy Hour is for learning.

MEGAN: Actually, I know you hated the Richardson piece because it's not your beat and you thought it silly, but it was a good piece that brought up some interesting questions. But, to the cone system. So, it used to be that, if one wanted to join the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, you took a written then (if you scored high enough) an oral exam. If you were the cream of the test crop, you did your 6 months of training and picked out a post/country based on openings — so most people ended up as a consular officer stamping visas somewhere and worked into policy/economic/public affairs jobs. Nowadays, when you sign up for the written exam, you pick your track — consular, administrative, economic, public affairs or political — and then your scores are judged against the other people in your track (Cone) and that's basically supposed to be the track for your career.

SPENCER: ...that sounds better.

MEGAN: In practice, it creates a system where the consular/administrative officers are lower-scoring on the exams because everyone sees him/herself as a political officer. And it makes it harder to shift personnel across tracks, leaving Foggy Bottom with less flexibility...

SPENCER: wouldn't it make more sense to have consular and administrative jobs filled by the State Department civil servants rather than Foreign Service Officers? Political affairs is more central to the department's mission, no?

MEGAN: Those aren't positions at Foggy Bottom! Consular officers are the people doing face-to-face interviews at embassies, processing visa applications. And administrative officers are the ones making sure the embassies run smoothly and hiring local support, that sort of thing. They're ind of all integral to the mission, and they're all in some way the public face of our diplomacy. And when they are poorly trained and scared out of their minds to let in the next terrorist and not given proper guidance, you have situations like the ones I documented in this Congressional testimony where they are systematically discriminating against female visa applicants in China based on stereotypes about women and women's roles.

SPENCER: Don't yell! The State Department has a civil-service corps that goes overseas as well to embassies and consulates — not everyone filling State jobs outside of Washington is a foreign service officer, as I learned when I covered this story. Notwithstanding the value of having a really on-the-ball fellow processing a visa application — and I'm not being sarcastic, it's a small-seeming issue with profound implications for, say, the world's outlook on American openness — it still seems like a track that overrewards political officers has value to it. I see your point though.

MEGAN: I just always think there is value in everyone having a similar group of experiences, like doing the grunt work of visa interviews, that can have value to the outlook a political officer brings to the job. But I always think people should have to do some grunt work before being handed everything on a platter. That said, I hope to GOD Hillary Clinton wrastles the control of China policy away from the Treasury Department.

SPENCER: It would seem like the sort of assignment that makes sense to give a joint team of envoys. The Times piece suggested that it's a Joe Biden kind of thing.

MEGAN: We need to stop having one economic policy on China and another foreign policy. Also, it will limit the influence of lobbyists on our China policy. Joe Biden's going to head the White House Task Force on Working Families. I want it, frankly, to be one of Hillary's babies. There has been so little nuance in our policy toward China the last 8 years — individual diplomats aside — that it is crying out for some high-level attention. It's the other test of our national power and what kind of nation we are going to be, and has as many implications domestically and for the rest of the world as our engagement in the Middle East.

SPENCER: Yes, absolutely. And add to that a completely incoherent military approach to the Chinese, where outposts within the Office of the Secretary of Defense's policy branch consider China an inevitable threat to American primacy — in part because of a troglodytic and cynical campaign by House Republicans in the 1990s" — but the Navy's current leadership considers the Chinese to be instrumental for responsible global security burden-sharing. And if only there were some blogger in the Crappy Hour orbit with an equal facility with both China and global finance...

MEGAN: I think the problem is that China is both of those things at the same time. We are inextricably tied to them economically and yet they are our biggest economic competitor. Ditto on foreign policy issues. We can't just erect a wall and shout at them from this side of it, and we can't continue without checks, and there's been no effort to find a balance.

SPENCER: Sure, but the problem comes from creating an incoherent and compartmentalized series of policy approaches both predicated on an inflexible and preordained outcome — the Shape Of China To Come, as Ornette Coleman or the Refused would say — that do not take into account such things as a) the future being unknowable; b) Chinese decisionmaking; and c) the fact that China owns the lion's share of our debt. It would be worth the while of whatever group in the Obama administration ends up taking the China portfolio cutting down on some of the more provocative elements of perpetual-motion Pentagon China policy efforts. Ideally you'd hedge against all bets and prepare for all contingencies. You just don't want to be in a situation where you guarantee the outcome you're trying to prevent, like a hostile China.

MEGAN: And, while they're at it, let's have some real discussion about the One-China policy, which is a large part of where any military hostility comes from an a place where State needs to have the dominant position.

SPENCER: I'd make a joke about dominant positions, but I'm having some blogger performance anxiety apparently. I swear this doesn't happen often. Don't tell your friends! Apparently China has had its way with me. Like it will with the UNITED STATES.

• Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has removed her name from Cabinet consideration. [The Hill]
• New York Governor David Paterson wants to be your next President because "Once you go black, you don't go back." [Politico]
• Fred Thompson is so cheap that he's renting his apartment out for the inauguration. [Huffington Post]
• The Supreme Court rejected the crazypants challenge to Obama's citizenship. [Politico]

• Your tax dollars at work: the State Department is now on Twitter. [Washington Independent]
• Karl Rove's gonna write a book about everyone who was mean to George Bush. Florists in D.C. are already planning on mass deliveries when the index is out. [CNN]
• President Bush's new neighbors are concerned that their community might become a target after he moves in. Now they know how all the residents of D.C. feel. [Raw Story]
• All the women out there who were concerned about Chris Matthews' run for the Senate in Pennsylvania might be able to breathe a sigh of relief. His brother doesn't think he'll leave television. [The New Republic, Politico]
• Christie Hefner's apparently leaving Playboy Enterprises... to angle for a job with the Obama Administration? [Portfolio]
• Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit is trying to grant Sandra Samuel, the Indian nanny who rescued Moeshe Holtzberg during the Mumbai terror attacks, the status of "Righteous among the Nations" to allow her to stay in Israel as long as she wishes. The honor is given to non-Jews who save the lives of Jews. [Associated Press]
• Pakistan actually arrested one of the suspected Mumbai plotters, by the way. [Huffington Post]
• In your official holiday-themed uplifting end to the roundup, homeless men at Detroit's Mariners Inn shelter and treatment center are raising $500 for each of 4 poor families they are adopting for the holidays. [Breitbart]

• The word is, again, that Hillary Clinton has been offered and will accept the Secretary of State job. It might not happen until after Thanksgiving, officially, though, because Obama announced he's rolling out the economic team first on Monday. [NY Times]
• Some people are a little concerned about who else she might bring to Foggy Bottom, though. [Washington Independent]
• On that economic team roll-out Monday, the top dog appears to be Timothy Geithner, the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who it's said will be our next Treasury Secretary. [The Hill]
• He might well be sharing the stage with Bill Richardson, who everyone is saying will be the next Commerce Secretary. Interesting note: if he is, he'll be the second Latino in a row to hold the position, like Clinton would be the second woman in a row at State. [CNN]

• What will presumably get announced when the Clinton nomination is official is the identity of Obama's national security adviser — who, speculation holds, will be Marine Gen. James L. Jones (Ret.). [Huffington Post]
• By the way, get your Hillary campaign memorabilia now — she's still selling office equipment from her campaign to pay her debts. Taking the Secretary of State gig might mean she'll never pay off those vendors, as she would be prohibited from raising money for the debt by law. [Politico]
• Some Obama volunteer is making his own personal stimulus package by trying to sell, on eBay, a binder and speech he or she pilfered from a pre-election rally. Classy. [LA Times]
• A bunch of elementary school kids at the Ludlow Elementary School on Long Island petitioned for — and received — a more permanent campaign keepsake: they've renamed their school Barack Obama Elementary School. [ABC News]
• If you're not a fan of Big Brother, stay the fuck away from the inauguration. [Associated Press]
• And, onto policy issues, there's now yet a third competing Democratic health care reform package — in addition to the pre-emptive health care legislative strike by Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and the package that Ted Kennedy, chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has promised, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has one, too. No wonder even Hillary Clinton couldn't get anything done 15 years ago. [The Hill]
• Upstart Congressman Henry Waxman, when he wrests the gavel of the Energy and Commerce Committee from Auto Industry Michigan Congressman John Dingell, is expected to push for Obama's energy and environmental reform plans. [LA Times]
• But a repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy will likely wait until later in the 2009 — or even 2010 — while Obama and his staff soothe the Pentagon's fears that other dudes will be checking out their junk in the barracks, as though that hasn't gone on the entire time anyway. [Washington Times]
• The crazy, goat-herding, rooster-owning prosecutor who, from his trailer parked outside the courthouse, engineered an indictment of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales showed up for court today and acted, predictably, completely crazy. Because he's crazy. [Brattleboro Reformer]
• Speaking of, Fred Thompson is engineering his return to acting, but no one is really sure how well he's going to fit into the Gossip Girl cast. [Huffington Post]

MEGAN: In continuing my streak this week of mornings completely sucking, the power company has informed me that I will be paying for power oday but not receiving any, so I am writing you from a very loud coffee shop where children are welcome. And, apparently, caffeinated! And you thought I wanted to die when I didn't know where my car was.

SPENCER: This week has really shaped up into your own personal stations of the cross, hasn't it? What happened with your car?

MEGAN: It was towed. Since New York City can't make me pay taxes and revenues are down, they're towing fucking everything now. They didn't take my knee high boots, though, and, apparently, they enjoyed the sound of my alarm for quite a while. I plan on wearing the boots in celebration.

SPENCER: Did you get it back from the impound lot or take the bus home?

MEGAN: (At this moment, in violation of this coffee house's ban on cell phone conversations, the man behind me is conducting one. Fucking kill me). Oh, no, I got it out of hock, after 10 days they would sell it!

SPENCER: Aee, this is why YOU SHOULD NEVER TALK ON THE PHONE. Only text-based communications are welcome. Never use your phone for voice communication

MEGAN: Anyway, if we're going to relate this to politics, can we call the rumors of Hillary as Secretary of State a big game of D.C. telephone?

SPENCER: And here's the tragedy. HRC will never be Obama's SecState — just ludicrous to consider, what with the backbiting and undermining, completely alien to Obama's management style thus far. HOWEVER. HRC has all the skills necessary to be a good secretary, even a great one: she has a massive international stature, she's fluent in the details of strategy and the larger picture, she knows how to be persuasive and she learned about management — what works & what doesn't — in the WH. But if you were HRC, would you rather:

• a) spend a couple years in an Obama administration, where you probably will clash with your boss, and that will lead him to fire you, or
• b) have the chance to pass the Clinton-Baucus Health Care Act of 2009, fulfilling a lifelong dream of improving people's lives in this country, and going on to spend your remaining years as a Senate baron?

MEGAN: I'm thinking Clinton should hitch her star to the Kennedy bill, because Baucus didn't make any friends pulling that shit this week. What is the Senate Finance Committee chair doing issuing a health care reform package without any input from the Health Committee chair? Nonetheless, yes, that is the real question: does she want to take full advantage of the Senatorial Retirement Home, or do something exciting and really change some shit. Because State is way overdo for some structural reforms, and this might well be one of the more exciting times to be Secretary of State, given where Obama wants to take our foreign policy.

SPENCER: Well, I don't understand the politics of health care, I have Ezra Klein for that. I'm just making a general point about what she can accomplish in the Senate.

MEGAN: Also, she's reportedly in Chicago. No, I understand that, it was just mostly a way for me to point out what Baucus is doing, besides issuing a health care plan that's in opposition to many of the principles of Obama's, which is legitmately at this point mostly Clinton's from the primaries.

SPENCER: Whoa whoa whoa. Structural changes at State? Never happen. That was one of Condoleezza Rice's many attempts at doing something that failed. It would be nice if the Department bred, say, a more expeditionary Foreign Service culture, allowing diplomats to better partner with soldiers & marines in counterinsurgency, but when Rice proposed sending more diplos to Iraq last year there was practically a riot. HRC doesn't want that headache.

MEGAN: Well, but that's not a structural reform from the bottom up — and I'm not saying HRC would want to take it on — but the system right now is a jury-rigged system of outdated written test-taking and competitive (argumentative) non-interviews that aren't really reflective of the modern world or modern career paths. But, speaking of Condi... You had some stuff to say about her.

SPENCER: Yeah, I want to push back against any premature Rice-rehabilitation. She has not a single achievement to her name. It's crazy that she's so esteemed in Washington. She didn't do shit, except enable the worst foreign-policy presidency of all time and serve as the worst national-security adviser in history. She even comes across as a fool and a knave in the new Woodward book about the surge.

MEGAN: Well, in her defense, she was honored at Glamour's Woman of the Year awards for her contributions to microfinance grants for women in developing countries and her efforts to get rape made a war crime at the UN. I'm not saying it balances out — like, at all — but she did do some small important things.

SPENCER: I can't wait until a document called NSPD-9 gets declassified, so we can see for all time that she lied to the 9/11 Commission and tried to destroy Richard Clarke's character for his crime of pointing out how she dithered while al-Qaeda got ready to attack.

MEGAN: Ugh, yeah, that would be the stuff that doesn't balance out. She does appear to have been the biggest Bush cheerleader as opposed to pushing back when it was likely her job to do so. But there are women to admire, like Tammy Duckworth, who one can arguably say has suffered for Rice's missteps and might join the Obama administration as the head of the VA.

SPENCER: That would be great. I love Tammy Duckworth and wish she had won her House seat in '06. Much like it sent a signal to Vietnam vets for Reagan to put Chuck Hagel at the VA (I think he was deputy first), so too should Obama put Duckworth in charge of his VA. She's allegedly the only competent, non-corrupt member of Blago... Blagojev... whatever the name of the Illinois governor is, she's his VA secretary and is killing it. Also she skipped the line ahead of me flying out of Denver after the Democratic convention and I didn't mind. Speaking of flying, I have to go to New Orleans but should we say something about Bill Ayers on GMA.

MEGAN: I mean, I kind of wish he'd opened his yap a little earlier because he seems so un-terroristy that it would've stopped people in their tracks, maybe.

SPENCER: Did you notice how on-message and clear he was? I don't know who the douche interviewer was, but he kept trying to get Ayers to concede that there was something shadowy to concede, and Ayers wouldn't. Also, journalists: never start a question with "surely..." because it invites your interview subject to dismiss your premise.

MEGAN: That is some good advice. My advice: avoid hurricanes at all cost and if someone wants to see your tits, tell them you paid too much for them to let someone see 'em for 10 cent beads.

SPENCER: Some spider or something bit me right next above my left nipple so I don't think I'm going to flash my tits this weekend. Anyway, may your week of disaster come to a close and I'll find a red wine you like in New Orleans. Also expect drunk photos from either myself or travel companion Calderone.

MEGAN: I am greatly looking forward to those! But you should probably tell your girlfriend to stop biting your nipples so hard.

SPENCER: Honestly it's some kind of bug.

MEGAN: I don't really need to know about your role-playing sex games.

SPENCER: Oh but really quick self-promotion: You want a strong woman at the helm of Obama's foreign policy? Meet Susan Rice. And check out this quote Princeton's Ann-Marie Slaughter gave me:

Slaughter added that Rice’s potential ascendancy represented a milestone in gender equity for the foreign-policy community. “It is very important to women in foreign policy that Susan is not married to her job,” Slaughter said. “She has a great husband and two young kids, and she managed to balance it. After Madeleine Albright, whose kids were grown, and Condi Rice, who does not have a family, that’s a very important message to send. After all, most men in foreign policy manage to have families, too.”

That was my kicker in the piece and now I'm out.

MEGAN: I've heard from a number of people about her awesomeness, actually, so here's hoping her participation in the Obama Administration doesn't end with the end of his transition team. Be safe!

MEGAN: Good morning, sunshine! Is there somewhere you are at? Because I got up to thunder and lightening...

MOE: Hey sorry I've been having some issues with the internet.

MEGAN: Ugh, I feel you there. Technological ones, or just a deep and abiding hatred for it?

MOE: Well like, it seems like it's on, and I'm getting your messages, but you're the only buddy I see and the rest have disappeared. So actually it's pretty cool, sort of like if the internet could all just run the way it did in 1996 and there were no Gawker commenters…

MEGAN: So, a little from column A and a little from column B! Anyway, I just had to ask if you wanted a good laugh, because then I would encourage you to read this article about how Condi is sad that there aren't more African-American diplomats, as though that is something, like, completely outside of the control of the Secretary of State. Who does, after all, appoint the senior ones. It's that kind of lack of self-awareness that I'll miss about the members of the Bush Administration, at least until Biden brings some of them up on charges.

MOE: Wow this broad doesn't stop getting better eh? Sarah Palin charges rape victims for rape kits and Alaska for nights in her own home. When my dad was in the State Department I remember it was rather difficult at the time supposedly for a white male to make it to senior foreign service, so I guess Warren Christopher did try to do what you're suggesting and promote minorities. And I believe that if you're an underrepresented minority standards are different on the oral exam, or your application gets expedited, whatever. The thing is that basically there are not enough African American diplomats for the same reason there are not a lot of Ivy League educated African American JD community organizers; there is not exactly enough money to pay off your student loans in the State Department, although they give you a lot of free education once you're there.

MEGAN: Word on the not being enough money to pay off your student loans, I looked into it in college and could've taken a Hill gig and come out better at the end of the first year if I'd worked on moving up in the ranks on the Hill.

MOE: And you have to be extraordinarily well-educated and pass a test that is not exactly accounted for in the No Child Left Behind act. Yeah, Condi might have noticed these things before…

MEGAN: Yeah, that exam blows, and then the oral is totally based on a judgment of the reviewers and all about how you interact with the other people there, so I can see as how it might not exactly be encouraging a groundswell of new minority foreign service officers. And, notably, plenty of places charge for rape kits. Like, until very recently, North Carolina. Hell, I expected to be charged for mine, but Virginia doesn't. On the other hand, Condi does not appear to be a Palin fan, so she's got that on her side.

There are different kinds of experience in life that help one to deal with matters of foreign policy...I'm not going to get involved in this political campaign. As Secretary of State, I don't do that.

MOE: Hahahaha she doesn't think it matters that her husband rode his snowmobile to the Bering Strait that one time?? As for the oral exam, my brother passed the written and failed the oral and said something along the lines of, "look, knowing who they did take, fuck that." I'm not exactly sure what that means though. I will tell you that now you've got me sitting here thinking, "Hey, I am a white non-money motivated person with no student loans who was, at least before I subjected my brain to so many hundred successive nights of alcohol abuse, a good 'test taker', who would like to quit this industry and get out of the country, maybe learn a language or two…hey!" I don't think you need a college degree if you pass the test. Let's sign up for the foreign service exam Megan! I'm sure the government would be so happy to have us.

MEGAN: I will sign up for the Foreign Service exam, but only if you agree to take it sober and I will take it drunk and we will see what happens and write about it. I am an excellent test-taker, too, but I really have no intention of moving to Uganda for two years. One of my grad school classmates ended up in the shittiest post in the world — Quebec City. Plenty of people don't pass the oral, actually. In grad school, they made us practice it even if we didn't intend to take it and the secret is: to be a complete asshole. Don't concede. Defend your point long past the point of absurdity. That is the key to becoming a U.S. diplomat. If you concede in the face of irrefutable logic, then you'll make a shitty diplomat. Now, go forth and prosper at the oral.

MOE: Well would you look at that, the Wall Street Journal is just flat-out accusing Sarah Palin of lying! "Despite significant evidence to the contrary." My dad's first post was Reykjavik. Luckily for him — less so for my mom! — he also passed some "language aptitude test" that enabled him to go to China right after. Hey, speaking of, did you know Alaska had an "embassy" right here in New York? So internationalist of them!

MEGAN: I do love that every other state has their clubhouse in D.C., but Alaska was like, fuck D.C., we're gonna have it in the Big Apple!

MOE: What is so weird about that is that aside from my dad I never met anyone in all American diplomacy who was really like that. And I was pretty sure my dad would only do that sort of thing to piss me off. That is interesting. I wonder how standards have changed.

MEGAN: Well, maybe everyone besides your dad is, like, able to control it in their personal life, or able to fake it in their professional life? I wasn't in grad school that long ago, really. Also, I guess if the WSJ is accusing Palin of lying, this shitty OpEd proves once and for all that there really is a firewall between the reported side and the editorial side?

[laughs hysterically]. God, I crack myself up sometimes.

MOE: Ugh dammit Hamilton Nolan is in there I know it.

MEGAN: Well, Hamilton aside, do you want to talk about Reverend Wright's supposed mistress or are we way too bored with him?

MOE: I can't see, but what's funny about Wasilla charging rape victims was that it's the same total bullshit about Palin and her fiscally responsible term as mayor and by fiscally responsible I mean running up deficits big enough to put every child through a year of college. Yesterday I went to see Tom Frank speak with Lewis Lapham and he pointed out that preaching fiscal responsibility only to run up huge deficits was a clever strategy Republicans call "de-funding the left"…and after the panel I overheard some dude saying he was still angry at the Democrats for voting for the war and that he was probably voting for Nader or Paul and I just thought, "oh God, fuck everyone."

MEGAN: Well, the whole idea of lowering taxes was supposed to be to "starve the beast" only it turns out that Republicans — and their constituents — love the beast as much as tax-and-spend Democrats and the only real difference is what part of the bext each side wants to feed. Also, the OpEd is about Fannie and Freddie.

MOE: Okay Hamilton Nolan is still in the WSJ. I wouldn't roast him here if I didn't think he could take it though. I guess Gawker Media could get another fucking Journal account. Oh god and speaking of Fannie and Freddie what the fuck did I do to deserve 442 comments here????? I'm afraid to look.

MEGAN: Anyway, I can summarize for you: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a complete clusterfuck but GWB is (now) totally right for bailing them out because to do otherwise would totally drive people out of their home in droves but in a McCain-Palin Administration there will be homes for everyone and lobbyists are all to blame or maybe not all to blame but none of it is the fault of Republicans nosireebob. Vote McCain-Palin for change from the Democrats who are the source of all evil and have been running the country for the last 28 years even though 20 of those were Republican.

Apparently, the Gawker commenters were mostly discussing economics, at least for the first 100 comments. After that, I can't guarantee anything.

MOE: We never get that many comments, it is not like Crappy Hour.

MEGAN: Someone started talking about spanking, and others about Canada, so that might have something to do about that.

MOE: Also they got on me for "No one has ever listened to Bush," which is a joke of course, but on a few different levels, because who in his administration has even ever really listened to Bush? I mean, Dana Perino's statement was so absurd it's hard to know quite how to deal!

MEGAN: I mean, people don't understand that few people listen to Bush himself before formulating policy, they just do it and then go in and present a shitty alternative plan and he agrees. It's like how you dealt with your parents sometimes.

MOE: So tell me about Jeremiah Wright's mistress. Is she one of those female suicide bombers? A former concubine-protege of Putin? A Weathergirl??

MEGAN: She is a church secretary in Texas, supposedly. The picture, though, is worth 1,000 words. Also, her husband is pissed she was boning a black dude.

MOE: Whoa and what happens when Kim Jong-Il dies? God I hope this country realizes how awesome it would be for people like us if it decided to leave that decision in the hands of Sarah Palin. It could be the first summit Wasilla ever hosted! Just think of the opportunities for pork. And moose stew!

MEGAN: Oh, God, and when the thought of moose stew makes me hungry, it's time to post this bitch and get some breakfast.

MOE: Toodles love. I miss it here. I have a new family now and…most everyone is very nice!

U.S. pop culture glamorizes pimping and prostitution, reducing the moral barriers to accessing commercial sex without regard to the origin or condition of the trafficked women and children.

New Investigative Research Shows Growing Demand For American Youth In Sex Trafficking And Sex Tourism Markets [PR Newswire]