Teh Twitter.

Once felt dumb to email about phone calls. Then came blogging email. Then tweeting blogs. And now, I’ve CALLED about tweets. Circle of dumb.
9:59 PM May 2nd from TweetDeck

… and now I’m blogging about calling about tweeting about blogging about emailing about calling … sigh.

Twitter had a lot to do with the successful pushback on the Playboy article and the Letterman “jokes”. It has helped drive a number of big stories the last two weeks. Like it or not folks, it’s here to stay. Well, for a while at least. It’s also a great way to keep up with what Redstate is doing and to annoy the snot out of @markosm. If you’re in the Redstate Army, it’s also a great way to track alerts. Resistance, in other words, is futile. You will be assimilated.

This is an OPEN THREAD. Feel free to use it to pimp your Twitter feed. See below the fold for my own recommendations.

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8,188.82 miles away from Washington, DC (if this site is to be believed), which is actually about 8,000 miles less than I expected. Then again, there probably isn’t anything there except empty ocean*, and if the administration was just going to dump terrorists into the water it would have said so.

Palau (Who?) to Take in 17 Uighurs

The obscure Pacific nation of Palau, one of the world’s youngest and tiniest countries, has agreed to take in the 17 Uighurs — Muslim Chinese — currently being held at Guantanamo.

President Johnson Toribiong announced in a statement to the Associated Press that Palau “agreed to accommodate the United States of America’s request to temporarily resettle in Palau up to 17 ethnic Uighur detainees.” He said their resettlement in Palau would be “subject to periodic review.”

[snip]

The US government has pledged $200 million in aid to Palau, but a White House official denied that money, for development assistance, had anything to do with the Uighurs going to Palau.

No word from Jake whether the official was able to say that with a straight face.  Well, that’s how the game is played.  See also Hot Air and AoSHQ for some healthy doses of cynicism; mine below the fold.

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Teh Twitter. Yeah. I’m hip. What of it?

Let me tell you something about Twitter. Despite the many humor blogs you’ve seen written, most people on Twitter are not sending Tweets (yes, that’s really what they are called … sigh) highlighting every mundane detail of their lives. “About to eat chicken” … “Eating Chicken” … “Done with Chicken” … “Remember the part where I was eating the chicken? That was awesome” … this is not, some of you may be surprised to learn, what Twitter is all about.

Twitter is a fast moving environment for commentary and to share articles, news, links, photos and essentially a snapshot of what’s happening on the web and in the world, in brief but sometimes enlightening or hilarious bursts, which don’t allow for too much embellishment, too much verbosity, or too much pompous over-stylizing of the way in which one speaks and communicates what thoughts or above-mentioned links which they may be trying to share.

In other words, no sentences like the one I just typed.

If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, the first thing you’ll need to do is set up an account. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Now that you are on teh Twitter, you want to start following people. The way to do this is to go to their @twitter address and click on FOLLOW under the name. Easy! Now if only you knew WHO to follow … (cough @CalebHowe cough)

Following the right people is the key to enjoying Twitter. To that end, I’m going to make some suggestions. As this is an Open Thread, discuss what you will, but I invite you, in the tradition of #followfriday, to share your Twitter recommendations. (If you aren’t familiar with hashtags ask in the comments.)

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Jake Tapper notices that Obama’s nominee for US Trade Representative, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, worked as a state and local lobbyist in Dallas; Tapper notes that he’s at least the fifth lobbyist picked for a significant position in the Obama Administration (and that’s before we consider family members like Joe Biden’s son or Tom Daschle’s wife). Here’s the Administration’s defense:

“Ron Kirk has never been a registered federal lobbyist,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told ABC News….”How precisely is it a loophole when we never pledged to bar state lobbyists?” a Democratic official asks.

(Emphasis mine). Hey, isn’t that a tune we have heard before?

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President Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has recieved an F- for his handling of the Obama Public Relations effort by most objective observers.  Maybe President Obama should provide stimulus to Julio Osegueda who currently works at McDonalds in Florida and is a 19 year old student at Edison State College by elevating him into the postion of Press Secretary for the President. Julio wants to be a communications major and he clearly is better at expressing himself than current Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Who would fare better under the tough questioning of Jake Tapper of ABC News? See below for a comparision.

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No words. Should … have sent … a poet.

.

You know, the phrase “bwa ha ha ha” is thrown around a lot these days …

Seriously, that was game, set, and match. Gibbs’ stuttering and stumbling is already becoming the stuff of buffoon legend. This wasn’t even the only such moment in the grueling press conference today. When repeatedly challenged on what the President means by reaching across the aisle on stimulus while rejecting all Republican ideas, Gibbs literally has no answer. He merely replies.

The best part is that Gibbs and Obama are getting hammered on things that they claim as their sovereign ground, like transparency, bipartisanship, lobbyists. And all by the mainstream press that was a complicit Obama campaign ally.

Gibbs is the perfect guy for this job, really. When he stutters, stumbles, has no answer, or simply flat tries to get out of something … well it’s just pitch perfect representation of the Obama administration, now isn’t it?