Tw*tter-like services are hitting the mainstream, and there is no better example that what Rick Sanchez over at CNN has been doing for the past few weeks by bringing Tw*tter and Facebook into the political conversations he’s been having on his Saturday shows.

I was intrigued by his use of Tw*tter last week, and followed after his last show. With the Biden announcement today, it seemed like a good time to join the conversation, especially since his question intersected with the question we were discussing on NewsGang Live — whether or not the Great Obama Text Message Experiment was a failure or success.

I shot a message to Sanchez saying I believed that the text message announcement plan accomplished exactly what it was intended to accomplish: Buzz, and a large audience available at the send of a single text message. Since we were in the middle of a pretty interesting and intense NewsGang Live discussion, I left it at that, and went on with our show.

That would have been the end of it except that I received a direct message from a Twitter friend telling me that he saw my icon pop up on Rick’s twitter page on-air. That intrigued me for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it meant that Rick was using Tw*tter in real time, unedited. (At least, in as real time as Tw*tter can be, given that they’ve disabled track and hobbled conversations. Hence, the use of the asterisk in their name.)

I was impressed. Impressed enough to return to his 10pm show.

My suggestions and criticisms for Rick follow:

Rick, props for understanding the value of real-time conversations with people on Tw*tter and other social media. Props for understanding the value of bringing the audience into your conversation in a real way, and props for understanding that by interacting with us, the conversation can evolve.

I believe you understand the value and power of these conversations. However, in your 10pm show, you made the mistake of harnessing the collective idiocy instead of the collective intelligence of those following you, and then turned that into some kind of “Tw*tter shaping the story” thing.

Now that tells me a couple of things. First, it says that you read my earlier tweet to you about Tw*tter breaking the Biden story ahead of you all. It also says that you understand the value of real-time conversations as they relate to news.

These are good things. However, the third factor in an effective use of Tw*tter and like services is the most important: Your own participation in the conversation.

Seriously, the only reason that 3AM lunatic comment got any traction is because you gave it traction. You skipped over really well-stated opinions in favor of the one that was utterly ridiculous.

If you’re going to have a conversation one to many, make it count.

Oh, and you could completely lose your pundit panel, too. Let the folks who really follow these issues be the center of the conversation. Kind of like Talkback Live was back in the days when I worked for CNN Interactive. Talkback Live was the prototype for what you’re doing now, use that audience power to propel you.

To the folks like Mark Mayhew who took me to task for criticizing Sanchez:

You make the point that Sanchez’ followers jumped from 500 to 950 in the span of an hour. How do you think that happened?

It happened because I, and a few others, sent Sanchez’ message out to those folks who follow us, who then sent the same message out to those who follow them, widening and overlapping the circles.

And Mark, the way I found your critical remark? I track my name. So when you sent me a message without following me, I was able to discover it and have a real-time conversation with you about the whole thing because track worked.

Not Summize. Track. via Twitterspy.

Tw*tter, as it is structured right now, precludes those real-time conversations. Important conversations. They control the flow of the conversation, preventing us from engaging with one another in a fashion that allows the conversation to shape the event. Steve Gillmor said it best:

Here is where the difference between search and track will prove pivotal. Search produces analysis after the fact, while track produces interactions that change the events themselves. As social hubs perform for the “cameras” over the next weeks, the efficiencies of those with real time synergies will likely outperform more historical views of the resulting data. Those micro-communities more adept at conversational politics will do better faster, and may in fact tip the election in much the same way Obama’s teams tipped the nomination process via the caucuses.

I call it this: The fierce urgency of NOW.

Regardless of the outcome in November, tonight is an historic and amazing event. Typing through the tears on this.

Thank you, young people, and grass-roots campaigners, and all those people that gave whatever they could.

On to November! And January.

Of those things only should one be afraid
Which have the power of doing others harm;
Of the rest, no; because they are not fearful.

- Dante Alighieri “The Divine Comedy - Inferno”

Guarding the Prisoners by Thomas Hawk

Today is the 5th anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. 5 years of killing, profiteering, maiming and murder in the name of ‘fighting terror’. Yet, the true terror is what this administration has wrought in the name of oil and profits and control.

Our constitution has been subverted. Our phones, email, internet access, all watched. We take off our shoes at airports to check for bombs even as we deny the poor the right to earn their own shoes. Our jobs are outsourced, our economy leveraged, and we have rows of headstones added to Arlington as yet another reminder that parents have lost children, partners have lost partners, spouses have lost spouses, and there is more to come.

My son received his draft card in the mail yesterday. Ironic, that. Yet I can’t help but remember that if it weren’t for the kids his age that volunteered to go there, he would be standing in line waiting his turn. For that, I’m grateful, but we have asked too much.

We’ve asked them to sacrifice their lives, their health, their sanity. It’s time to stop asking and start giving back. Time for us to quit spending on war and start bringing these soldiers home with honor and glory and our resources. It’s time to stop spending our health care and our education and our veterans’ futures in Iraqi oil fields.

I’m leaving now to participate in a candlelight vigil and protest of the war at the War Veterans’ Memorial here. Photos will be here soon. Please consider attending a similar vigil in your neighborhood as a gesture of support for those living and those lost, and those still so far from their home.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, blogswarm, 5yearsofwar, 1milliondead, moveon, vigil

Picking up DG from school today, thinking to myself that I was grateful it was Friday and wondering how the week had gone so fast and left me feeling so slammed by the end. Throwing herself in the car in a huff, she explains thus: “I cannot believe how STUPID some people can be. They just spout off what they heard on the news like it was fact without bothering to read or learn anything. Grrrrr.”

If every hair could have stood on end in all its curly glory to indicate her anger, they would have. I could almost see those tinges of red she’s got in it glowing. And because she’s at the glorious age where she actually likes to talk about what went on, I got the whole story about the political debate in PE class. As she told it in her own words, it occurred to me that really, it was a story all of us should read and pay attention to. Not because she was so absolutely right, or because she conducted herself so absolutely well, but because she gave me a glimpse of what the kids — the ones who really will be the ones affected by our choices today — are thinking and hearing. I asked her to guest-blog it over on the political blog, which she did, after posting it on her own blog, too. I hope you’ll take some time and read it and leave her a comment. I’m biased, but I was impressed with not just the dialogue, but the thoughts she had behind it, thoughts she describes as “the eyes of the voices that do not yet register as important.” Here’s a teaser for you:

Dear God, someone shoot me now so I can stop listening to this. “Are you kidding me!” It occurs to me that the people I’m standing next to all have no older brothers. “You don’t get it, you don’t get how serious this is, dude people are dying, DYING, over there and you’re joking about it–”

…damn, I wish I had her gift for writing out dialogue verbatim. That must be a gift that comes with NOT having ADHD.

But beyond the opinion and the conflict, there’s this: Most of the kids she was sparring with were parroting the opinions of their parents and the nightly news. We live in a very, very conservative area here. We are one of the true pockets of conservative politics. Despite the fact that neighborhoods less than five miles away are largely the domain of immigrant farm workers and the disadvantaged, here in our little slice of suburbia, we have manicured lawns, neatly planned housing tracts, and lots of overprotective parents who really have bought into the culture of fear, and lots of parents say things that they don’t expect their kids to pay much attention to, but the fact is, they ARE paying attention and they are forming their own outlook for the time in the not-too-distant future when they fill out their own voter registration.

If nothing else comes out of this year’s election, I hope the level of discourse improves, and the Rush Limbaughs, Bill O’Reillys and yes, the Keith Olbermanns tone down how they say the things they say, and parents consider that the tone they use when speaking of those who disagree does resonate with their kids.

Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

She’d love your comments. I hope you ‘ll leave some. Oh, and I hope she continues to lean toward being a Democrat, because she’d be a formidable debate opponent.

Technorati Tags: parenting, politics, opinion, debate, discourse, future voters

If you are an independent voter in Los Angeles County and are requesting a ballot to vote for a Democratic candidate, you need to be SURE you mark the EXTRA bubble at the top of the ballot establishing that it’s a vote for a Democrat. Why it isn’t enough to mark the ballot for a Democratic candidate is beyond me, but there you have it. See the scan below and in particular, #6.

If you do not fill in that bubble, your vote for the candidate will not be counted. I could rant and rave about how incredibly stupid it is to have to mark a ballot twice — once to indicate that you’re voting for a Democrat and once to indicate which Democrat you’re voting for, but for now, just know you need to do this to be counted. More here.

Technorati Tags: ballot, independent, voting, California

This post is not about politics, at least, not about politics in the sense that I’m going to argue for or against a specific candidate or platform or even party. This post is about life in our bipartisan household, or how we survive in spite of being political opposites, which do not attract under many circumstances.

BD is a lifelong Republican; I am a lifelong Democrat. Well, mostly lifelong, except for when I was 13 and rebellious and ran off with my friends in our very, very conservative neighborhood to help them campaign for Richard Nixon in 1972. As recently as two weeks ago, my beloved uncle who loves and respects BD but cannot understand how I could possibly marry a Republican and look myself in the mirror every morning, cast that transgression at my feet. In front of my daughter, no less. I reminded him that it was teenage rebellion and there were sure a hell of a lot worse things I could have done than campaign for Nixon. He doesn’t think so. To this day, it rankles and so my uncle can never resist a needle when he has the chance. Unfortunately, he speaks with a high degree of moral authority in the political department, having spent 30 years in the Foreign Service, beginning in the Nixon administration and ending with the Clinton administration.

My family and I are not quiet Democrats, either. We do things like work for campaigns, and watch debates, and listen to stump speeches, and blurt things out in the middle of the nightly news like “Will we ever be rid of that evil Bush and his little Cheney, too? And we don’t stop there, because I was also raised to understand that just as parents have a duty to instill morals and ethics into their children, so too should we enter their names in the rolls of the Democratic party the day they are eligible to register to vote.

This is not optional. On their birth certificates, it is written Democrat by design. It is as fundamental to my family as raising children in the Church is to Catholics. On Sticks’ 18th birthday he got his drivers’ license and registered Democrat. It was my birthday present. Seriously.

Still I married a Republican and so we had to figure out how to negotiate a standing truce when it came to politics. I am convinced was only possible because my husband is an incredibly tolerant and confident man who does not believe I am insulting him personally when I look at him with hurt eyes and say things like “I can’t believe you voted for Bush. Twice.” And then I remember all of the times that I was incredibly tolerant and confident when he looked at me with mocking eyes and said things like “I’m sorry Bill Clinton’s blowjob turned into an impeachment. Really, it’s too bad.” I knew he was trying to say that he shared my pain, but my pain was nothing compared to the anger I had about a blowjob becoming an impeachment in the first place, and besides, I suspected there was a little bit of inward satisfaction gained with that meaningless gesture of sympathy.

The reason our 20-year marriage is as strong as it is because of the Internet. Because as long as we have the Internet, I have a place to say (he would say “spew”) all of the things that he’d have to listen to if I didn’t have it. All of the cheerleading, all of the criticism, everything that goes into a political season, goes to the Internets instead of his face. When he sees me typing furiously during the nightly news I’m sure he heaves an inward sigh of relief that he never has to know what I’m writing. I somehow doubt that he’s ever even peeked out of morbid curiosity, because he’s the kind of guy that would never be that curious.

We both agreed many years ago to be intellectually honest about our politics and to respect one anothers’ opinion. I confess that the intellectual honesty part is easier for me than respecting opinions has been, especially over the last eight years. But I try, I really do. When we find common ground it’s a reason to break out the ice cream and celebrate, because it’s not there very often but when it is, it’s usually on an issue like global warming, or energy conservation, or something really major that we can completely agree upon.

So far this season has been unusually peaceful. We agree on the war, and Hillary Clinton, at least to the extent that he doesn’t froth at the sound of her name and I don’t wave the flag in his face over her. That’s something. We agree on reducing dependence on foreign oil, and we even agree that healthcare reform has to be a priority this year. I’m starting to wonder if he’s secretly leaning toward becoming a Democrat.

What I do know is that his absentee ballot is still on the table, unopened. Here’s something else I know, but shhhh, it’s an undisclosed secret still… That ballot is not a Republican ballot this year, for the first time ever.

I know why I love this man. It’s that intellectual honesty thing. He may be a Republican in his heart, but he’s ready for change, too. There’s always hope, anyway.

Technorati Tags: love, marriage, primary, election, issues

Ordinarily I would post this on the political blog, but it’s such an unusual video, and has so many musicians that are wonderful and inspiring that I’m going to share it here. No matter which candidate you are supporting, one of the messages of the video is that we, as a collective whole, can bring about change. And the other message is one that I believe in with all of my heart: VOTE. Please, if you’re living in a Super Tuesday state, get out and vote Tuesday. If you live in a state with a caucus or primary coming after Super Tuesday, VOTE. Vote for your candidate, whoever that is, Democrat or Republican. Let’s make this primary and the subsequent general election about empowering the electorate to speak and be heard.

Technorati Tags: yes we can, obama, vote, election, primary, Super Tuesday