President Barack Obama admitted Monday to a group of students in Shanghai, China that, while billed as the most tech savvy President in history, he doesn’t use Twitter.

When asked by a student if he was aware of China’s firewall blocking the popular micro-blogging service, Obama forewent his tech friendly reputation, saying, “I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

President Obama’s admission of his unfamiliarity of the internet tool du jour would have been an altogether innocuous acknowledgement that the President is, well, old, were it not for the dogged efforts of his campaign apparatus in portraying the young then-Senator Obama as hip and tech savvy opposite the old and inaccessible Senator John McCain.

In explicitly making the case that McCain’s simple awareness of technology was not equivalent to Obama’s superior appreciation–and use–of technology, the Obama campaign launched a web ad in September of 2008 callously assailing McCain for his inability to use a computer and send an email. Were McCain elected, their logic went, the seat of the Free World’s power would run through the 73-year-old’s car phone and computer running on MS-DOS.

Of the ad, the Obama campaign said, “‘Still’ details why John McCain would just be another out of touch president offering more of the same.”

While the Obama campaign suggested McCain’s indifference to new technology was the result of the Senator’s age, Republicans were quick to note the real reason for his perceived tech-illiteracy: Senator McCain’s battle-field wounds limit the use of his hands. The Obama campaign never apologized, insisting McCain’s failure to make use of technology was due to his age and he was therefor unfit to serve as President.

President Obama’s admission that he’s Twitter-averse is not an acknowledgment that he’s old or even out of touch, like he suggested of Senator McCain. It is, however, emblematic of the duplicitous ends to which President Obama and his allies–complicit in this and countless other deceptive electioneering offenses–will go in the name of campaigning.

In honor of Fire Joe Morgan getting the band back together for a day, we bring you a gallimaufry Open Thread.

Moe Lane was interviewed at Blogometer. Teaser: “Why, Moe? Why?”

Google is not letting go of the Google Voice-to-iPhone Net Neutrality issue, having re-released an unredacted version of its letter to the FCC. It’s going to be delicious when T-Mobile USA bans Skype on its phones, and asks Google to uphold that ban.

It’s Follow Friday on Twitter! Many RedStater editors are on there, including @presjpolk (me), @moelane, @jeffemanuel, @ewerickson, @leonwolf, @baseballcrank, @brainfaughnan, @sorendayton, @haystack, @robertbluey, @kevinholtsberry, @krempasky, @cayankee, @paulfuller, @billstl, @jamesrichardson, @markimpomeni, @cianfrocca, @vladimirrs, @tobytoons, @calebhowe, probably more I’m missing in this quick survey, and of course @redstate itself. Gotta catch ‘em all!

Enjoy a peach of an Open Thread.

First it was the messianic depictions of Obama’s head surrounded by a halo or pasted onto pictures of Jesus or depicted in a white, glowing robe…a quick search of “Obama Jesus” on Google Images finds numerous examples of this (of course some of these are mocking the messianic complex the Left has about their hero).  Now a prominent Democrat has decided that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor deserves the same treatment.

Felix Sanchez, the Chief Executive Officer of TerraCom, a government and public relations firm in Washington, DC and Chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts has decided that Sotomayor is the second coming of the Virgin Mary. Sanchez has updated his Twitter feed (screencap here, in case it disappears from Twitter) to use a Photoshopped image of Mary with Sotomayor’s face.

As I mentioned in a diary earlier today, I’m not a Catholic. But I’m pretty sure that the Catholics and several other churches would have a serious problem with someone defacing an icon of the mother of Jesus Christ. According to Wikipedia, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a “celebrated 16th-century icon of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.” It also states that the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe “is a symbol of significant importance to Mexican Catholics.” The use of “Virgen de Guadalupe” may not even make sense, considering Sotomayor is Puerto Rican - not Mexican.

As someone who represents the interests of Latin Americans, one would think that Sanchez would be a little more sensitive to the interests of his community. But I suppose political expediency and the success of Sotomayor is more important to Sanchez than respecting the reverence for the mother of our Savior.  After all, to Dems like Sanchez, the real savior is at the All-Star game tonight.

(Oh, and note that one of our brethren, Joshua Treviño, is schooling Sanchez on Twitter right now, and has also called him out on his blog.)

The unrest in Iran continues apace, and while the media coverage remains sparse, word nevertheless gets out of Iran thanks to our modern age and, in particular, to Twitter. As Moe notes, the situation is complex. The cast of key figures holds few heroes. But then, it’s not really about Mousavi, is it?

It’s about the thousands of individual Iranians, from citizen reporters on Twitter to underground hip-hop stars, who believe their vote, and voice, should matter. It’s about the fact that they are taking to the streets in protest for that right. It’s about their belief that they ought to have a say in their destiny and their government. It’s about a Muslim nation with a rogue government being stalled and thwarted by thousands of citizens demanding their individual rights be honored.

On both the right and the left, on the blogs, at twitter, among the pundits, this is largely a shared sentiment. Sure there are some who cynically object - ignorant celebrities or Obama loyalists. But for the most part, the web has seen a sea of green in support of the people of Iran exercising their right to self-determination. And now we see some in Congress standing up.

U.S. Congressman Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Chairman of the House Republican Conference, and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have introduced a resolution that goes where the President fears to tread: explicit support for the Iranian dissidents. Said Congressman Pence:

“This is an important moment for the Congress, our country and the people of Iran. For days hundreds of thousands of dissidents have taken to the streets of Iran in support of freedom and democracy. The American cause is freedom and in that cause the American people will not be silent. I am honored to join Chairman Berman in offering this important resolution. The joint resolution I and Chairman Berman introduced will give voice to countless Americans who stand with the Iranian dissidents as they stand up for freedom. I urge Members on both side of the aisle to support this important resolution and I hope for its immediate consideration.”

So far, support for the dissidents in Iran from America has been largely from inviduals, bloggers, twitterers, and pundits. Congressman Pence’s resolution will be the strongest official response to date.

Click through for the reported text of the resolution:

Read More →

Some attention was paid to the fact that the newest social networking website, Twitter, had decided to push off its scheduled maintenance Tuesday morning as the situation in Iran became steadily more embroiled in conflict. As it happened, Twitter was a major source of information coming out of that repressed society as news was happening. Twitter had, though, scheduled a few hours down time just when Iran was at a peak of activity. So, in order to keep the flow of communication to the outside world flowing, Twitter announced it would not turn off its service until Iran calmed down.

This is pretty interesting news, that a mere social networking site was so deeply involved in momentous news of the day and that it became so relied upon by people hungry for news and interested in discussing a major democratic movement is definitely a new thing. It is especially interesting because the U.S. media so badly fell down on its job of reporting activities in Iran making Twitter a vital tool for communication. But what was even more interesting was that Obama’s State Department tried to claim credit for Twitter’s decision to stay in operation during the day.

Read More →

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.

Read More →

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.)

Read More →

From the department of pathetic ignorance or willfully not getting it (not sure which to file this one in yet) comes this clip of a CNN reporter shouting down a Chicago Tea Party attendee for not displaying the appropriate appreciation and gratitude to President Obama for his gift to the state of Illinois of billions in borrowed money and trillions in new debt.

These people simply don’t get the fact that these modern-day tea parties aren’t simply about taxes.

They’re about increased taxes and even more greatly increased debt, yes. But they’re also about the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; about the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome, and — perhaps most importantly — they are about current attempts by liberal politicians to interject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen can try to control the focus of these tea parties all she wants by shouting at participants to talk only about taxes, but that just shows she’s missing the boat as badly as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat), who posted to Twitter this afternoon that she was “confused” why people were fed up with trillions in government waste.

It’s okay; these people can not get it all they want. Those who participated (and are participating in) any of the thousand modern-day tea parties being held around the country today get it — and when this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, they’ll start to get a clue just what magnitude a sleeping dragon they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.

I’ve previously written at length about Keith Olbermann smearing Twitter and Dan Cooper, suggesting that they, along with Fox News, conspired to defraud America by setting up a fake Twitter account in Keith’s name. As we all know by now, Keith couldn’t have done a worse job with that segment. Not only was the Twitter account legit, he actually had a second account for his show, which tweeted the very segment where he denied being a part of Twitter!! Well, Keith has finally decided to address the smear. I could explain this in detail, but I think I’ll let Keith speak for himself:

“Mr. Cooper has informed us he had nothing to do with the account.” Way to go Keith, way to man up. I asked Dan Cooper for his reaction to the segment. Here’s Dan’s reply:

“The damage has been done. Mr. Olbermann’s choked-out legalese has not undone it.” - Dan Cooper

Read More →

On Thursday, Twitter was atwitter and blogs were abuzz about Keith Olbermann’s embarrassing “Worst Person” fail, following a post by Greg Pollowitz at National Review Online highlighting the hilarity. Olbermann named Twitter his “Worst Person in the World” because he mistakenly believed he wasn’t on Twitter. He was. So I thought I’d do something that Olbermann’s entire staff consistently fails to do: research.

The first lapse in research you already know about. Keith predicated his entire segment on the notion that he had no Twitter account, therefore the account in his name was fraudulent. Of course, it wasn’t true. MSNBC ran the Twitter account in Keith’s name. But believe me, this is only the beginning of an epic fail.

Did Olbermann Tweet His Anti-Twitter Screed?
I’m going to summarize up front. It’s too good to drag out. Not only is Olbermann wrong about being on Twitter, he’s twice wrong. His own show runs a very active Twitter feed. As in, in addition to the one Olbermann was on about. The person who he smeared as a fraud and a Fox News operative is not who Olbermann thinks he is. Even the email to Olbermann may not be what he thinks it is. In short, there was virtually no factual statement from Keith’s mouth when he named Twitter “Worst Person” and called the account a fraud. (I bet you wonder if any of Keith’s accounts were Tweeting on the day of the story aren’t you? Keep reading.)

Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript:

But our winner is Twitter. I told you this was trouble. I find out today that I have 13,900 some odd followers on Twitter. I‘m not on Twitter. I tried to sign up last summer and abandoned the project. I found this out when I got a piece of junk e-mail today, at my address, from some outfit trying to barnacle on to the Twitter process. Though it was my address, it had somebody else‘s name on it, possibly whoever was perpetuating the fraud. The subject line read “Dan Cooper Media, local Tweet request.” And the e-mail began, “hi Dan Cooper Media.”

Who is Dan Cooper and why would he be getting spam e-mail about my fake Twitter account? He is one of the five architects of Fox News.

Video is below the fold. Suffice it to say, the delivery and expression made it clear that Olbermann was suggesting a nefarious Fox News plot to defame him via Twitter. Yes, seriously. If you think it’s funny now, what until you hear what Dan Cooper has to say.

Read More →

Never send to know for whom
the fail whale flies; it flies for thee.

I was watching the Twitter pretty steadily today because the chatter about Obama’s tele-town hall was fairly amusing. I mean, sure, there was some bulltwitt, there always is. But overall worth watching. (Speaking of worth watching, second Olby story has come to my attention … video below fold)

So I happened to be .. twittering? …. when I saw an awesome “tweet” (sigh, yes they are really called that) from Mary Katherine Ham which read: “Olbermann/MSNBC Twitter FAIL: http://bit.ly/lkRY,” and which linked to a story by Greg Pollowitz at National Review Online about my pal Keith.

It seems Keith named Twitter the “worst person in the world” last week (raising, to my mind, a whole host of existential questions that reminded me of when Flagstaff was named Worst Person and Keith kept calling him Red, to which I responded with a Simpson’s classic moment) because he believed some nefarious Fox News plot was responsible for a dastardly plan to discredit him.

Read More →