The weekend's top typo: Miserly Democratic National Committee hands out a little more money to states

Seeking to find some good news to disseminate amid a bounteous harvest of otherwise dire political predictions for Democrats in Tuesday's voting, the Democratic National Committee sent out a rapid response news release over the weekend.

It proudly announced that the committee, headed by President Obama favorite Tim Kaine, had just presented 11 different state parties with a total of $2.67 to split among themselves for last-minute expenses.

That works out to about 24 cents per state. However, maybe two states could combine their DNC resources and buy one postage stamp for a voter reminder that would arrive too late.

Of course, being the current party that controls everything in Washington -- the White House, Senate and House of Representatives -- the Democratic organization had made a typographical error. It really should have been $2.67 billion.

No, just kidding. But with all the money flying around from both sides this campaign you believed it for a second, didn't you? The DNC meant to announce the amount distributed was $2.67 million. Billions, millions, what's the difference? One letter.

Shows how much change there's been back there: That sum used to be considered sizeable until the party's Washington community got organized by those Illinois folks 22 months ago.

You want big numbers? Mark your calendars for Dec. 1, when the president's deficit commission is scheduled to report.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press

Sunday shows: Kaine, Shelton, Biden, Rove, Steele

ABC This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Gen. Hugh Shelton, author and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee; George Will; Ed Gillespie; Anita Hill and Amy Walter.

Bloomberg Political Capital with Al Hunt: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Vice President Joe Biden.

CBS Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Former senior adviser to the president, Karl Rove and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

CNN  Fareed Zakaria GPS: Richard Holbrooke, Peter Bergen, Kishore Mahbubani and Shashi Tharoor.

CNN State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Florida U.S. Senate debate among former state Speaker and Rep. Marco Rubio, Republican; U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, Democrat; and Gov. Charlie Crist, independent.

Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace: Two candidates for the U.S. Senate -- Republican former Rep. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- with panelists Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Juan Williams and Nina Easton.

NBC Meet the Press with David Gregory: Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, with Rick Santelli, Rachel Maddow and Harold Ford Jr.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Pentagon

Obama rally ignites USC

President Obama is currently at USC to speak to crowds of students and the public in an effort to energize voters for the midterm election.

The Twitterverse is especially active with comments from supporters, voters and critics.

Here are a few sample tweets:

@RANKIS: Went to UCLA, but I'd love to be at #ObamaUSC right now. Okay L.A. stand as one. It's your day. It's California's day. It's the Nation's day

@hotpsychic: I have a psychic prediction. Republicans will win 120 seats in the House, and all 33 in the Senate. #ObamaUSC

@jdguenther: Overheard at USC Obama rally "We should have tailgated." 

@marc_cooper: RT @neontommy: New Slideshows from the ground at USC: http://bit.ly/bFhXCc #uscobama #obamausc

@hillelaron: Jamie foxx: "can I put y'all on my twitter?"

@allisonkgibson: Jerry Brown kept it shockingly short.

@NotYaAvg80sBaby: wish i was able to go see Obama today ... heard the line was 4000 people long at 8am said forget it lol #obamausc

The hashtags #obamausc and #uscobama are trending in Los Angeles. You can follow either stream to get attendees' live impressions.

-- Lori Kozlowski
twitter.com/lorikozlowski

Photo: People await the arrival of President Obama at USC. Credit: David McNew / Getty Images

 

Social media wrap: Bachmann, Brewer, Rooney react to Florida healthcare lawsuit ruling [Updated]

 

(This post will be updated throughout the day.)

A lawsuit brought by 20 states seeking to overturn President Obama's  healthcare law can proceed, a Florida judge ruled Thursday.

In a blow to the administration, the ruling went against Justice Department arguments that the lawsuit, led by the state of Florida, is premature.

“In this order, I have not attempted to determine whether the line between constitutional and extra-constitutional government has been crossed,” wrote Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The ruling dealt primarily with procedural issues.

Politicians reacted on Twitter:

 -- Craig Howie

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Photo: President Obama electrifies a Florida crowd on healthcare, and perhaps sends one gentleman to sleep. Credit: Getty Images

Social media wrap: Defense Department utilizes solar power, Jessica Simpson (as White House goes green)

The Defense Department is increasing its focus on using solar energy in overseas operations (and it has nothing to do with actress Jessica Simpson raising temperatures during a visit to the mess deck of the USS Harry S. Truman).

It’s no joke, though. In fact, the military's move toward renewable energies comes amid the deathly seriousness of increasing attacks against U.S. fuel convoys in Afghanistan’s Khyber Pass,  another national newspaper has reported.

A California company of Marines arrived recently in Helmand Province replete with “portable solar panels that fold up into boxes; energy-conserving lights; solar tent shields that provide shade and electricity; solar chargers for computers and communications equipment,” the newspaper said.  It reported that U.S. military leaders plan to “rapidly expand their use” of such materials in future.

The military’s move toward renewables was saluted by Democratic congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who tweeted:
 
"DoD using renewables makes sense - safer troops, decreased costs, jumpstart to important part of ....

Sunday shows: Petraeus, Kaine, Gillespie, Rendell

ABC This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.); ex-Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Laura D'Andrea Tyson of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board; Dr. Martin Regalia of the  U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Cokie Roberts, Matthew Dowd, Chrystia Freeland and David Ignatius.

Bloomberg Political Capital with guest host Lizzie O'Leary: Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine.

CBS Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Kaine; Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.), Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee; Ed Rollins, Karen Tumulty and John Harris.

CNN GPS with Fareed Zakaria: Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University; Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute; Gavin Schmidt of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Ayaan Hirsi Ali of the American Enterprise Institute, and Irshad Manji of New York University.

CNN State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.); Heidi Cullen, climatologist; Tom Wagner, a NASA scientist.

Fox News Sunday with guest host Bret Baier: Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics and Liz Clayman of Fox Business; with Bill Kristol, Dana Perino, Nina Easton and Ceci Connolly.

NBC Meet the Press with David Gregory: Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces in  Afghanistan.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press

Nevada Rep. Dina Titus comes face-to-face with a 'tracker' and her constituents are not amused

In this too-much-information age, you could make a pretty strong argument that the most important person on a campaign team is the one wielding the video camera.

The tracker – a staffer assigned to trail someone’s opponent, in hopes of catching a gaffe of career-ending proportions – rose to fame in 2006, when Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia publicly called an Indian American Democratic tracker the derisive racial epithet “macaca” and subsequently lost his reelection bid.

More recently, a tracker for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid captured GOP Senate hopeful Sue Lowden advocating “bartering” for healthcare. Her subsequent attempts to defend the poor choice of words – particularly by evoking the days when you’d “bring a chicken to the doctor” – helped bring down her nascent GOP primary campaign. Once the clear favorite, she lost to "tea party" supporter Sharron Angle.

Trackers have proved so useful that the Democratic National Committee recently launched a website encouraging submissions of "macaca moments" from pretty much....

Barack '8 Years of Failed Bush Policies' Obama tells high school grads: 'Don't make excuses'

It was a big deal for the excited about-to-be graduates of Kalamazoo's Central High School. They had won a White House competition against 1,000 other schools, not for payoff jobs in the Obama administration.

But to see and hear the Real Great Talker himself. President Barack Obama went all the way to Michigan Monday to congratulate the teenagers and their proud families:

I’m here tonight because I think that America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes for a successful school in this new century: Educators  raising standards and inspiring their students to meet them. 

Community members stepping up as tutors and mentors and coaches.  Parents taking an active interest in their kids’ education – attending those teacher conferences, turning off that TV, and making sure that homework gets done.

And why let a good heartwarming Heartland story go to waste? So the president also....

Obama plays the technology dunce card again

Is President Obama really a technology-challenged dunce, or does he just play one on stage?

In his commencement speech at Hampton University on Sunday, Obama again fell back on his tried-and-true gag about not being able to operate popular gadgets before making his broader point.

"With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," he told a class of more than 1,000 graduates. "All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

That line about not being able to "know how to work" an iPad or Xbox succeeded in drawing some laughs. But it worked against Obama when the reactions from technology enthusiasts online began pouring in.

Obama "drinks from the 'information overload' Kool-Aid," claimed one blog headline. Having not actually spent time trying to optimize his workflow with a device like the iPad, the president appears to have little basis from which to make such a contentious claim.

So if Obama doesn't know how to use Apple's portable music player -- a product hailed for its ease-of-use, even for a Harvard Law graduate -- was the preelection Rolling Stone magazine article about what's on his iPod a farce?

Come to think of it, his picks did seem a little too varied, uncontroversial and universally respectable to be the real deal. Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Sheryl Crow and Ludacris? Give me a break.

Sunday's backlash wasn't unlike the time in November when Obama disappointed his fans online when he told a roomful of Chinese youths, "I have never used Twitter."

That admission hasn't appeared to have slowed down the growth of his "official" Twitter account, for which the Democratic National Committee recently shopped around for a new administrator. It's grown by more than a million followers since then -- from about 2.6 million to 3.9 million.

During that same speech in Shanghai, he went on to say, "My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone." Doesn't look that way from this picture, right, unless A) it was staged, or B) he was composing the following e-mail:

fda jfl;hdsajg  dl;isagjdal;ksf jfjda;rsklg;i asdl;sfjdas;tf das;ik;nlfj asd;afjas f

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Associated Press

News shocker: Now, politicians fudge on Twitter 2

A common complaint from people getting started with Twitter's short messaging service is that its 140-character limit is too constraining.

Apparently it's flexible enough for some politicians to use as a vehicle including some fibs and misleading statements. A worthy reminder to news consumers about swallowing everything.

FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan watchdog, has begun combing through the public tweets of accounts from verified politicians. After assessing their accuracy, some of the results aren't pretty.

The organization's analyses are much longer than 140 characters, but the conclusions are blunt. So what has FactCheck.org found?

Let's start with the Democratic National Committee's dubious blip from last week:

"While the President spoke today about Wall St reform, GOP senators took checks from Wall St lobbyists."

A quick dissection, courtesy of the analysts -- how many "GOP senators" took checks? One. Was the money connected to Wall Street? Maybe, but it's not clear.

Four days later, the Republican National Committee matched its opponents with an equally misleading tweet about economists agreeing that Obama's stimulus package is an "epic fail." (Yes, the RNC used the words "epic fail.")

In reality, some of the 68 members affiliated with the same organization, the National Assn. for Business Economics, who were polled said the stimulus wasn't affecting employment in their industries. And they didn't all agree.

"Spreading disinformation via Twitter is thoroughly bipartisan," writes co-authors Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson about the phenomenon, which they call "mis-tweeting."

It's not just the two political party groups firing questionable claims back and forth. Individual politicians are getting in on the game as well, including House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (see photo). He wrote on his Twitter profile last week:

At the end of this year, Americans will face the "Obama tax increase," & it will be the largest in history

That supposed "Obama tax increase" is actually the Bush tax cut expiration. And as for being "the largest in history," that's if you neglect to account for inflation. With inflation, the tax changes wouldn't even make the top 10, notes FactCheck.org.

Shading political rhetoric is nothing new, of course. Online and on TV, like Comedy Central's "Daily Show," folks with access to Google have blasted politicians' off-the-cuff falsehoods. ABC's "This Week" has made an online feature out of checking its guests' on-air claims.

But on Twitter, politicians theoretically have quite a bit of time to verify what they send out before they hit the "Submit" button. Is that too much to ask?

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Associated Press