Conservatives Need to Join the Fight on Twitter

If you're not on Twitter and you consider yourself at all politically active, you need to join. Twitter has become a very effective way to counter the propaganda of the left, spread a conservative message, and even provide a lot of comedy relief as funny conservatives ridicule the left's sacred cows. I joined in 2008 right before the nominating conventions and now follow 246 people and have 801 followers of my own. You can follow here.

Twitter allows you not only to read what other people are posting and post your own ideas and statements, but retweet messages you think are important to your own followers. It's a force multiplier.

For instance, if John Nolte of Big Hollywood posts an interesting item, I can retweet that item and the 801 people that follow me will see it also.

Every Obama attack on Romney or the GOP this year has been met with withering counterfire from conservatives on Twitter and they've been highly effective in blunting or completely turning those attacks back on Obama. The "war on women", the Romney dog story (Obama Eats Dogs), the bully story, and just yesterday "Obama in History"...you name it, they've all been effectively countered on Twitter.

John Nolte has written a good piece on why conservatives must join the Twitter war. Here are some high points:

1. Twitter is an equalizer in an eco-system where MSM types are no longer insulated in their bubble.
2. More and more news narratives start on Twitter.
3. The media no longer gets the last word. 
4. The Left is losing the social media war.
5. It's fun!

Read Nolte's piece for all the background and details.  And then go to Twitter.com and sign up.  It's free, and if you're not sure who to follow, after you follow me you can look at the list of people I follow to get a good group of people providing great content.

Secret Service Employee Should Have Kept His Bias Secret

At least he shouldn't have posted it on the official Secret Service Twitter feed:

Secret Service's finest hour -- Protecting the President of the United States is a difficult, stressful job, and sometimes you just gotta vent. Chris Moody: "The Secret Service joined Twitter only a few weeks ago, but after an accidental post complaining about having to watch the Fox News cable channel, it's clear that the agency is still getting the hang of social media. 'Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can't. Deal. With. The. Blathering.,' the U.S. Secret Service’s official feed read on Wednesday. It was promptly deleted. The agency's Office of Government and Public Affairs is responsible for the feed, and the misfired tweet was posted by an employee's iPad who thought it would go on a personal account, the agency said, calling it an 'unapproved and inappropriate tweet.'" This raises some interesting questions. Why does the Secret Service need a Twitter account? Why are they monitoring Fox News "for a story"? And how embarrassing is it to hire somebody who expresses frustration and contempt by making each word its own sentence, in the manner of a junior-high girl texting about a rival's new jeggings? 

I would assume that the keys to the official Twitter account would only be given to rather senior Secret Service employees. Kind of makes you wonder what's going on over there.

Twitter Looking at Taking Over Tweetdeck

If you're not a Twitter user this probably won't mean anything to you, but I'm a Twitter user who uses Tweetdeck to manage my feeds, so I wonder what the outcome of all this will be?

Twitter is in talks to buy TweetDeck and its eponymous Web and mobile app for about $50 million, according to a report.

TweetDeck is one of the most popular Twitter clients on the market, allowing users to do many of the same things they can on on Twitter's website and apps -- tweets, direct messages, lists, search trends.

Twitter is eyeing taking over TweetDeck as part of its plan to increase the micro blogging platform's appeal, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the rumored talks, citing "people familiar with the matter."

Officials at Twitter, based in San Francisco, and TweetDeck, based in London, were not available for comment Monday.

Twitter's reported interest in TweetDeck comes shortly after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the social media firm to lead product development, while remaining chief executive at Square, the mobile payments start-up.

Last month, Dorsey told students at Columbia University that Twitter will have to become "more approachable so that people can get into it immediately and it's extremely relevant right away."

Twitter by itself is not real user friendly. You have to keep refreshing to read new posts from those you follow, and separate entries are required to read mentions or direct messages. With Tweetdeck I can have multiple feeds open all at once an they automatically refresh so the latest posts are always shown. I know Twitter has not always been happy with companies like Tweetdeck because people don't spend their time on the Twitter site looking at the advertising there. I just hope they don't screw up a good thing.

It's Twitter's Birthday

The social networking site Twitter is now five years old.  Like Facebook it has grown remarkably rapidly and has become a valuable information gathering tool for people like me.  It can also be pretty entertaining, depending on who you're following.

I started with Twitter in 2008, not long before the political conventions, and have since posted 7,740 tweets to the service.  I currently follow 161 people, from politicians to conservative pundits to White House correspondents to comedians.  I currently have 613 followers of my own, and if you'd like to join in you can follow me here.  Every time there's a new post at HolyCoast.com a tweet goes out, along with other things I find interesting during the day.

It's not always easy to condense a thought into 140 characters, but it's good practice for concise writing.

Is Social Networking Helping Us Communicate More...or Less?

This person thinks we're losing actual human communication:

The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness, according to a leading American sociologist.

"A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological," MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.

Turkle's book, published in the UK next month, has caused a sensation in America, which is usually more obsessed with the merits of social networking. She appeared last week on Stephen Colbert's late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report. When Turkle said she had been at funerals where people checked their iPhones, Colbert quipped: "We all say goodbye in our own way."

Turkle's thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

Like anything I think it matters how you use the technology. I do see a lot of people walking around with their heads down scrolling through stuff on their smartphone rather than watching what they're doing (such as the lady that walked into the mall fountain because she wasn't paying attention). However, for me, social networking has provided an opportunity to keep up with people I rarely see.

Take for instance the annual trip to the Rockport Gospel Music Festival. There are people who I see there every year, but in the past knew little or nothing of what they did during the time between Festivals. Now, thanks to Facebook, I can keep up with them and easily touch base in ways I never did before. The same is true with many relatives who live in other parts of the country.

No doubt the whole thing could get quite addictive for some people, but all-in-all I think social networking has provided me with much more communication than I had before.

What if Jesus Had Been Born When Social Media Existed?

If you're a Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, or other social media user, you'll enjoy this:

Follow HolyCoast.com on Facebook and Twitter

With the election drawing to a close, here's a reminder that you can follow HolyCoast.com on Facebook by clicking "Follow my blog" in the box below:

NetworkedBlogs

Blog:

HolyCoast.com

Topics:

Politics, Social Issues, Humor

Follow my blog

and you can follow along on Twitter by clicking here and then clicking the "Follow" button:

That way you'll be notified as soon as new posts go up.

Twitter will be big on election night.  Most of the updates you'll get from me as the races are decided will come out via Twitter.

And if you're on Facebook but haven't sent me a Friend request, you can find me here.  I'm always happy to add HolyCoast.com readers to my Facebook friends.

Follow HolyCoast.com on Facebook and Twitter

Just a reminder - you can follow this blog on Facebook by clicking here and hitting the "Follow" button, and you can follow along on Twitter by clicking here and hitting the "Follow" button.  That way you'll be notified as soon as new posts go up.

And Twitter will be big on election night.  Most of the updates you'll get from me as the races are decided will come out via Twitter.

And if you're on Facebook but haven't sent me a Friend request, you can find me here.  I'm always happy to add HolyCoast.com readers to my Facebook friends.

Tweeting the Bible

This evangelist has taken on an interesting project:

Chris Juby has set himself a task of truly biblical proportions: to summarize the 800,000-plus words in the Old and New Testaments in a series of snappy daily tweets.

Juby, a freelance Web designer and director of worship at King's Church in the northern English city of Durham, plans to condense one Bible chapter a day down to 140 characters or less -- the maximum allowed for a single Twitter post. As the good book contains a hefty 1,189 chapters, he doesn't expect to reach the final installment of Revelation until Nov. 8, 2013. (Juby admits, though, that he might miss that deadline, as he may have to take "the odd day or two off every now and then").

The Christian evangelist started his epic precis last Sunday by boiling down the 31 verses of Genesis Chapter One into the charmingly simple: "Gen1: God created the heavens, the earth and everything that lives. He made humankind in his image, and gave them charge over the earth."

What I'd like to see is someone condense a contemporary worship service in 140 characters so we can get it over with.  I bet I could do it:

Loud opening, greeting, more loud vapid songs, greet your neighbors, sermon simplified to 5th grade level, offering, glad to leave.

Yep, that's it. Now I don't have to go.

Praise a Terrorist, Get Your Walking Papers

There are some things that even CNN can't tolerate:

Mediaite reports that CNN has fired senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr. As Daniel Halper pointed out the other day, Nasr wrote on Twitter on July 4 that she was "sad" to hear of the death of Hezbollah's Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah--a man for whom she has "respect." Fadlallah had justified suicide bombings, is believed to be responsible for the Marine barracks bombing, and had said that "Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this Holocaust beyond imagination."

In a followup blog post last night, Nasr wrote that it "was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all."

She explained that she knew about all the wicked aspects of Fadlallah's life--saying she even "lost family members" in the barracks bombing--and was simply referring to the fact that she respected Fadlallah for his opposition to "honor" killings and beating women. But saying you respect Fadlallah for opposing murdering and beating (Muslim) women is almost like saying you respect Osama bin Laden for building day care centers.

CNN doesn't think Nasr's apology makes up for what she said. "We believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward," Nasr's CNN superior Parisa Khosravi said in a statement.

Twitter is a 140 character two-edged sword. You can't be too flippant because it's awfully easy to take things out of context.

If You Tweet You Can't Have a Seat

In the jury box, that is:

No tweeting or status updates in court or deliberation rooms. Judges have been increasingly instructing juries to stay off Facebook and Twitter -- and don't use the Internet to investigate the cases, according to Joseph Rosenbaum, a Reed Smith partner, who chairs the firm's global Advertising Technology & Media Law practice.

Social media and access to search the Internet from anywhere have begun to change the rules in the U.S. court systems. County and city courts have begun to post rules outside each courtroom instructing people not only to turn off their mobile phone to eliminate the noise from obnoxious ringtones, but to keep people from writing blogs and posts.

Judges have started giving juries instructions to stay off social network sites. As jurors come on to the jury and during the trial, "judges have begun to tell them they cannot surf the Web, do their own independent research and communicate with others via social media," Rosenbaum says. "They take the 'don't communicate and don't read the newspapers' language we use to hear and moving it into the digital age."

Some courts have contemplated banning bringing mobile phones and personal computers into courtrooms, Rosenbaum says. While today a ruling might get thrown out of court if someone tweets or blogs during a trial, at least one state has considered taking criminal action against the jurors.

Can you imagine if Twitter had been around during the OJ trial?

OMG!! OJ tried to put on the gloves AND THEY DIDN'T FIT!! ROFLOL!

Maybe a little Twitter commentary from the jurors would help speed up these trials.

The GOP Doesn't Need a Presumptive Nominee...Again

For some odd reason the GOP has a habit of nominating for president whoever's "next". That's how we ended up with Bob Dole in '96 and John McCain in '08. Melissa Clouthier has a good piece on Facebook encouraging GOP voters to avoid that trap again:

After George W. Bush left office, the presumptive nominee was John McCain. McCain was a relatively weak candidate but he had suffered a humiliating loss to Bush, and he was consoled with the notion that he'd get the backing of the Republican establishment this time.

Once McCain got the nomination and lost, who was second and who stepped back and waited his turn? Mitt Romney.

So now, Mitt Romney quietly raises money. He helps guys like Scott Brown get elected behind the scenes. He tries to avoid too many specific questions about the health care situation in Massachusetts.

And here comes CPAC. He's won the Straw Poll how many times?

Here's the thing: If Romney lost to a guy like McCain, what makes anyone think that he has what Americans want in their president this time around?

The Republican Party needs to stop king making. They need to stop throwing their resources behind the guy who has "waited his turn" and start looking for the nominee who is right--both literally and figuratively.

There should be no assumptions when it comes to who should be leading. The establishment folks have consistently screwed up in both message and messenger.

The Republican Party needs new blood. The people who watch, need to keep an open mind.

2012 isn't around the corner but the politicians are laying the groundwork now. Hopefully, no one is presuming the mantle. Our next president needs to earn the presidency the hard way and prove he or she has what it takes to lead the country.

Exactly.

I tend to think that the availability of other means of communication, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, will tend to keep the establishment GOP from simply anointing whomever they want. The voters and the grassroots activists will have a lot more to say about things in 2012.

Dragging the GOP Kicking and Screaming Into the Internet Age

People like Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn are trying to do just that, and today they write about the successful Scott Brown campaign and what it will mean for future voter efforts:

Scott Brown's supporters became fans of the candidate on Facebook, where they commented on his status updates and uploaded their own photos. The Republican Senate hopeful took to Twitter, using the #masen hashtag to let his followers know how the race was going. His campaign powered its field operation through targeted online ads and Web-based spreadsheets, and raised $12 million from 157,000 individual donations in the last two weeks of the race. After he won last week, his team live-streamed the election-night party in Boston online.

Democratic candidates don't have a monopoly on online organizing anymore. Brown and his campaign staffers deserve the credit for proving this, but it's a reason to celebrate for us and our new-media colleagues, too -- we've been working to get the GOP into the Web era for the past decade. We've been laughed out of high-level campaign meetings, told that online budgets are the first thing to go and informed that having a Facebook page is "unpresidential." And it wasn't until recently that people stopped asking us to fix their computers.

But we've always had faith that the rightroots could organize for victory, as the netroots had on the left. It just needed some nurturing. And now that it's launched Sen.-elect Brown in Massachusetts, the online-organizing playing field is more even than it's ever been in the past 10 years of American politics.

From the beginning of the race, Brown's campaign knew its candidate was a long shot. To have any hope, his team needed to get his message directly to voters. This populist approach -- and the hope for a 41st Senate vote against the Democrats' health-care overhaul -- inspired the rightroots to latch onto Brown's campaign through blogs, Facebook and Twitter. This paid off in an overflow of volunteers and contributors from across the country and a nearly five-point victory.

It's not as though GOP organizers woke up last fall and realized they'd better learn to use this Internet thing. Our party is out of power -- and the party out of power has the stronger incentive to innovate. If it doesn't, the base will. Netroots protests dragged the Democratic Party into the 21st century kicking and screaming in 2006 and 2008. Frustrated with the president and health-care reform, the conservative "tea party" movement has done the same for the Republicans in the past year.

There's much more at the link.

Voters and wannabe activists no longer need to wait for marching orders from party officials. The modern communication tools we have today make is possible for just about anyone with a computer to impact a race, whether it be a push on Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or any number of other options. I'm sure this drives the old guard GOP nuts because these activists can shape the campaign message without their high-priced help.

The Tea Party movement shows just how powerful the average voters can be when they get mad and decide to act on their own. They've changed America this year and managed to do it without any help from the people who think they own the campaign business.

Can there be risks associated with all of that? Sure. Movements led by average folks can go dangerously off track without some solid supervision, but that supervision doesn't have to come from party professionals. Citizens with solid common sense can be just as effective at guiding the message as anybody who makes a living at it.

The successful candidates of the future will have a robust presence on the web, both in terms of interactive websites, Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, campaign blogs, you name it. Candidates who are more in tune with the people are going to campaign better and govern better.

Don't Forget Twitter or Facebook

If you didn't follow me on Twitter or Facebook during last night's Massachusetts Massacre you missed a lot of good stuff. If you're on Twitter you can follow along here, or if you're on Facebook I can be found here.

Obama is Not a Twitterer But Plays One on TV

During a town hall meeting in China President Obama was asked if he thought Chinese people should be able to use Twitter, a service which is sometimes blocked by the Chinese government:

The messaging service is at times blocked in China. Obama began by confessing: “First of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. I notice that young people — you know, they’re very busy with all these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone. But I’m a big believer in technology, and I’m a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information.”

“I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me,” he continued. “I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger. And it makes me a better leader, because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

A couple of things come to mind. First, there is a "verified" Twitter account for Barack Obama with 2.6 million followers. Somebody's feeding these people the daily dose of Barackoloney, but apparently not the president.

Secondly, do you really believe the guy who declared war on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News really believes in openness and hearing opposing opinions?

I, on the other hand, so not have a staff handling my Twitter feed. I post all that stuff myself and you can follow along here.

How I Spent My Saturday Night

If you want to see what I was doing during the latter stages of the Obamacare vote, check out the Twitter feed. It was fast and furious. If you're on Twitter feel free to follow along.

Attention Twitter Users - Something to Monitor Today

Twitter users might want to monitor the hashtag #votefraud today. It's being used by anyone who spots irregularities at the polls, such as New Black Panthers attempting to intimidate voters as they did in Philadelphia in 2008 or ACORN workers stuffing ballot boxes. I'm going to keep an eye on it through the day.

Could Twitter Make or Break a Show?

Thanks to the multiple time zones in our country, network shows appear three hours earlier than they appear in the west, and that gives the east coast folks a chance to watch and review programs before the west coasters have a chance to see them. That also gives us west coasters a chance to pass on programming should we read east coast negative reviews. Mickey Kaus comments on that phenomenon:

Why watch Saturday Night Live in L.A. when the twitters from back East say it's weak? Does that mean TV shows now have a New York problem like movies have a Friday problem? Movies: If twitterers don't like on Friday, it will die on Saturday. TV: If the East doesn't like it, it will die in West? Just asking! Not my industry. ...

A couple of people I follow on Twitter are in New York, and I noticed some negative tweets regarding SNL coming out last night. It certainly didn't make me want to stay up and watch.

And besides, the weak season premier featured a new cast member dropping an "F" bomb live on the air. If that's the best they've got, who needs them.

Over at Wizbang Kevin Aylward talks about all the great subjects for SNL skits that were ignored in last night's season opener. Looks like a bad year coming for SNL.

St. Louis Cardinals' Fans Should Be Very Ticked

I just happened to stumble on this line in a British article about Twitter going after fake accounts:

Twitter has decided to act after Tony La Russa, the coach of an obscure American baseball team, launched a legal action over a fake account.

As I write this the "obscure American baseball team", the St. Louis Cardenals, have an 11 game lead in the National League's Central Division. During his tenure with this obscure team La Russa has two pennants and one World Series win.

Conservatives Outmaneuvering Liberals on Twitter

This isn't really surprising and I'll explain why in a moment:

Liberal bloggers established online political activism, besting their conservative rivals during President George W. Bush's eight years in office. But conservatives are now finding great success 140 characters at a time. Even this week, the conservative organization Club For Growth promoted their Twitter account on their $1.2 million ad campaign against health care.

Even though President Obama and national Democrats use Twitter – the social micro blog that everyone from Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O'Neal to Chuck Grassley and Newt Gingrich often use to directly speak to followers – Republicans have embraced the technology. And with major policy issues being debated and the midterm elections right around the corner, liberal bloggers acknowledge the GOP has the upper hand when it comes to using 140 character messages known as "tweets" to influence the discussion.

"While it is obvious the progressive blogosphere is superior, we are being out-organized on Twitter," said Gina Cooper, a blogger who helped organize Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of online liberal activists that met last week in Pittsburgh. "There is some catching up to do on the progressive side."

So, why do conservatives do better on Twitter than liberals? Because conservatives can articulate their message in 140 characters or less since it doesn't contain a bunch of emotional language. When you skip the adjectives and adverbs it's amazing how much you can say in a short space.

And if you wish, you can follow this conservative by clicking here.