Hillary Campaign's Response to Obama's "Monster" Comment

"I'm willing to club a baby seal to make a deal."

Does anyone else remember that scene from the Weird Al Yankovic movie, "UHF"?

In an advertisement for a sale, a crazed use car salesman has an adorable baby seal on the hood of a car. He is brandishing a baseball bat and is screaming at the camera that unless 20 people come down to his lot and buy cars within the next 15 minutes, he is going club the baby seal. Presumably to death.

This email that I received from the Hillary campaign reminds me of that:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

It's hard to take any of the literature I get from the Hillary for President people seriously when the suggested response to everything is, "So you should give us more money."

When she won states, she asked for money.

When she lost states, she asked for money.

And now, when the other guy says something mean about here, she's asking for money.

I am not ignorant of the importance of money to political campaigns, I just think that the people whose support she is counting on are smart enough to know that different actions ought elicit different responses. There are more logical ways for people to respond on Hillary's behalf like writing letters, making phone calls, etc. to the Obama campaign, both tying up valuable resources and letting Obama know the extent of their ire.

Perhaps Hillary supporters or the Hillary campaign itself could make a YouTube video spoofing Michael Jackson's Thriller or something around the song "Monster Mash." That would be an appropriate and proportionate response.

I guess it's not so much that the campaign is asking for money, it's that the request is couched in the inaccurate and I think at least marginally demeaning - to the intelligence of anyone who received the solicitation - idea that donating money will prevent it from happening again in this election or future elections.

Hillary's people should just say that those sorts of ad hominem attacks ought make us - the potential donors - so angry that we should donate money to demonstrate our outrage.

I think that would be a more honest, compelling and ultimately successful request.

Here's a little trick I learned in the CIA...

On YouTube.

Get the full article here.

It's not surprising that the intelligence community is monitoring user-generated content for important intelligence. While some people might think that monitoring such seemingly innocuous lines of communication is a waste of intelligence dollars, I would simply point out that gambling on the average human's stupidity is usually a good bet and that there is probably some extremely sophisticated screening and searching technologies and techniques available to these analysts to separate the wheat from the chaff in regards to credible intelligence.

I wish there was more information on how exactly the CIA is leveraging social media in the intelligence war on terror.

God Save the Queen!

The English Monarch's annual Christmas Day message was broadcast live this year - as usual - but was also subsequently posted to YouTube by the royal administration a short time later.

At the time of this posting, the number of people who viewed the speech on YouTube (900,000) was almost thrice that of the number of people who tuned in to watch it live.

Other governments should embrace the use of YouTube for disseminating their messages in an easily accessible, reviewable medium.

For more information, click here and/or here.

California's DMV is Hip

California's Department of Motor Vehicles has a YouTube account and a Myspace profile to educate drivers of all ages about traffic safety.

I think that this is smart.