Gates and Mullen talk Twittering, texting, the modern military and Iran

Here's a very good video that goes beyond the cliched old-guys-don't-know-anything-about-new-communication-technology-and-social-networking guff that we usually hear so much about.

The Ticket reported here on the Twitter and Iran phenomenon on Thursday.

But also Thursday, a reporter at a Pentagon news briefing asked both Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the effect of new personal communication technology and social networking, specifically concerning Iran.

Gates recalled the role that the Internet played in penetrating the old Iron Curtain, helping the Soviet Union to crumble and liberating Eastern Europe from Communist domination. And Gates noted, with apparent pleasure, that some unnamed countries around the world (can you say Iran and China?) can try to block these evolving communications but can no longer shut them all down.

But the questioning and conversation itself evolved into how the modern military, run by older personnel but manned and womanned by young people (average age 21) must use these new methods to both get its operational messages and philosophies out but also to get valuable feedback back.

Gates admitted he hasn't "a clue." Mullen says he's on Facebook and Twitter to be connected to the younger volunteer armed forces.

Well worth watching. And, as we so often say on The Ticket, thanks to C-SPAN.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Barbara Boxer orders general to call her "senator"

Well, at least these congressional hearings focus only on the major issues facing the troubled country.

California's Barbara Boxer was chairing a hearing of her Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, examining what in blazes is taking the Army Corps of Engineers so long to properly protect a Louisiana city that sits below sea level from the sea. Good luck with that still. Again.

Boxer was getting a little exasperated, head dramatically on hand and all. As the proper sign of military respect for a female, Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh was answering "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am."

And finally, the ma'am had had enough. "Could you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am'? It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title." No, really. Watch for yourself. She actually said that. A different attitude than on Memorial Day.

Truth be told, even on Capitol Hill, Walsh has taken a few years of service to his country to earn those general stars too. But Boxer did not deign to call him general. Nor did she bother with a please. Of course, the general complied with the Democrat's wishes immediately without complaint.

(UPDATE: 5:28 p.m. A Boxer aide sends word that she did refer to Walsh as general several times during the hearing, though not on this particular clip. The aide also said Boxer telephoned the general earlier today, "expressed their respect for each other" and look forward to working together in the future.)

Next year, Boxer is up for reelection back home. We'll see if Babs gets to keep that title.

  -- Andrew Malcolm

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Hat Tip to Jimmy Orr, who has his incisive "South Park" take over here.

Most U.S. adults went online for Obama-McCain political info last election

More Americans plugged into the Internet during the election campaign last year than ever before, with 55% of voting-age citizens logging on for their political coverage, according to a Pew Research Center study.

The much-touted prowess of President Obama's campaign to use the Internet and social media to drive support and donations certainly put an exclamation point on the Web's new-found importance in the political process.

It should come as little surprise then that Barack Obama supporters were more plugged-in than those in the John McCain camp.

Obama supporters were more actively sharing political content around the Web, as is the nature of social media.

Twice as many Obama supporters signed up to receive automatic updates, according to a telephone survey of 2,254 American adults from Nov. 20 to Dec. 4, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4%. That could be attributed to his Twitter and mobile announcements -- like when he broadcast his choice for VP running mate, Joe Biden, via text message.

Though truth be told, as the Ticket reported back then, many got the news elsewhere before their text message arrived.

Online video was a major draw leading up to the election. The poll found that 45% of wired Americans watched Web video about politics or the election. The Obama administration is capitalizing on the ubiquity of Internet video with its White House YouTube channel.

Even still, Internet adoption only appears to be accelerating. Take, for example, Sen. McCain, who admitted during the election cycle to being a computer illiterate. Now, he's a Twitter fiend, sending a handful of updates per day to more than 428,000 followers.

Heck, even Larry King, maybe the oldest guy on television, is getting caught up in the Twitter craze.

-- Mark Milian

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Photo credit: quinn_anya via Flickr

How Obama's team gets his messages out while you're not looking

Here's how President Obama's team is using his vast donor e-mailing list to circumvent any intermediaries and get his pure political message out to millions of supporters to marshal support for whatever he wants, in this case support for his budget:

They send out an e-mail to an estimated 12 million or 13 million names with a short text message from David Plouffe, the political campaign's manager and now the campaign manager for "Obama for America." He says something like:

With this budget, President Obama is asking Washington to do something it rarely does -- look beyond the next election and take the long-term steps to ensure America's future strength and prosperity.

It will involve sacrifices and difficult decisions. But it will also boldly invest in the three areas most critical to our economic future: energy, healthcare, and education.

Washington doesn't work. Maybe you recall Obama mentioning that a few thousand times during the two-year presidential campaign. Here's how The Ticket explained that ongoing predicament recently.

So Plouffe, in a message that just went out today, urges Obama fans to watch this video about his boss's ideas for change -- see below. The Boss's key words delivered directly and without diluted interpretation. Same sort of thing he did by taking the economic stimulus package bill signing outside the Beltway to Denver recently; The Ticket dissected that strategy here.

Pretty effective and straightforward and going on while no one in the old-fashioned media is really watching.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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The housing crisis and its politics explained online

The economic crisis, spurred by a faltering housing market and credit defaults, is perhaps the paramount problem facing the country. Purporting to fix it was a major platform that certainly contributed to President Obama's election to office.

But the reality is that relatively few people actually understand what this whole credit crunch is and who caused it. The extent of knowledge for many is that a) it's harder to find jobs, b) HDTVs are impractical buys right now, and c) Obama signed legislation that's supposed to stimulate it.

A number of bloggers and participants of the social Web have put together some very clever and informative resources for learning about the current housing situation.

Animator Jonathan Jarvis crunched the essentials into an 11-minute video he posted online earlier....

Who's this Meg Whitman who wants to run California?

Outside the business community, to the extent she's known at all, Meg Whitman was the wrong woman on some lists of John McCain's possible vice presidential choices.

Having been Mitt Romney's national finance chair in the Republican presidential primaries -- gee, was that a year ago already? -- the 52-year-old Whitman moved almost as quickly as Romney to back McCain, helping him raise millions in his unsuccessful general election effort alongside that Alaskan governor.

Now, Whitman herself has announced an "exploratory committee" to run for California governor, which is exploratory in name only. There'll be many more announcing on both sides in coming weeks, elbowing to replace the term-limited Austrian-born incumbent.

Whitman appears quite comfortable speaking in public, although she's otherwise a political neophyte, not counting navigating the arcane internal politics of corporate monoliths like Procter & Gamble. She's actually a New York native from Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. According to her new website (see video below), she's spent the last 30 years in California as an avid skier, fly fisherperson and hiker.

The mother of two, Whitman had successful stints with several companies, most recently as president and chief executive of EBay. She became a business billionaire, which is a good thing if you want to run for anything in the nation's most populous state, where TV ad salesmen did not nickname the Golden State by accident. 

Born on Aug. 4, 1956, the youngest of three children of Margaret, a homemaker, and Hendricks Whitman, a businessman, Whitman attended local high school before heading for....

New RNC chair Michael Steele lays out early GOP goals

On Friday The Ticket reported on the embattled Republican Party electing a new national chairman, Michael Steele, the first African American to head Abraham Lincoln's historic party. And his initial political outlook here. And here's a good profile of the little-known Steele.

There was some kind of sporting event on television Sunday. So some of you may have missed the new chairman chatting with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."

Steele indicates his early focus will be on recapturing New York's 20th District, where moderate Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand had won but vacated the seat recently to take Hillary Clinton's Senate spot.

The other two big elections Steele has his eyes on are the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, where Steele's Democratic counterpart, Tim Kaine, cannot seek reelection as governor.

Wallace is a good interrogator so we're running the entire interview here in two video parts, one just below and the other on the jump (scroll down or click on the "Read more" line below).

Be interested in any reader comments, too.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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'Tarp Song' spawns unlikely leader against bailouts

Do you want some TARP?

Bill Zucker wants some and so do his legions of followers. Zucker, a 53-year-old musician from Hollywood, Fla., wrote the "Tarp Song" a few weeks ago.

After e-mailing his recording to CNBC, he immediately received a response from a company executive, asking for permission to play the song on the air. For the rest of that morning broadcast, CNBC anchors raved about the song's catchiness.

They weren't the only ones with the "Tarp Song" stuck in their heads. Since then, Zucker has filmed a silly video to accompany the lighthearted nature of the song, which has received more than 81,000 hits on YouTube in less than two weeks and a great deal of praise in the video's comments.

Though the music and lyrics seem bouncy and fun, the subject matter is anything but. TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, is a U.S. government plan to spend taxpayer money on purchasing equity in businesses in the hopes to strengthen the financial sector.

"I want some TARP," Zucker sings in the song's chorus. "They're giving money away for free. I want some TARP. Save a little bit for me."

Zucker calls the Obama administration's program a slight to the average American. Just about every industry, from failing banks to automakers, seems to think it's entitled to a piece of the pie.

"When I hear that the porn industry wants TARP, that disgusts me," Zucker said. "But they would get it faster than the guy, who has a business on the corner."

People seem to be buying into Zucker's ideals. He has been receiving ...

Morphing 44 presidential faces from Washington to Obama

Much will be written about next week's historic inauguration of the country's first African American president. And we'll be doing our fair share here for sure.

But if a picture is worth 1,000 words -- and we tend to think it's more like 735 to 738 words --  then here's 44,000 words' worth of history in about 238 seconds.

Watch the faces of all of this nation's presidents morph into each other from No. 1 GW, who owned slaves, to No. 44, who doesn't. It provides a soothing, even inspiring sense of history.

Along the way you'll see fashions change. It wasn't until president No. 6 that we got presidential facial hair (all right, chops, but they count). That's a sign of great intelligence, as everyone with a moustache or beard knows.

We hadn't noticed Polk's piercing eyes before. Or how much Zachary Taylor looks like a general. (A Roman general perhaps.) Millard Fillmore looks just like, well, a Millard. Abe brings in the beard. Then with Grant we have six bearded/moustachioed presidents in succession, interrupted by the clean-shaven McKinley, then back to moustaches with TR and Taft (with the best handlebar) until Wilson and his goofy granny glasses.

And they've all had Gillette-scraped faces since 1914.

It was, as you may have noticed in early vintage photographs, very unfashionable to smile, even for politicians. Everybody was supposed to look grim and ever so 19th century.

So it's not until Jimmy Carter here in 1977 that we get that trademark cheesy grin. And from him on, they've all got smiles of one kind or another right up to the Change Maker himself, No. 44. Check it out. Let us know below what other patterns you notice.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Attn: White House cooks: Barack Obama used to be a food critic

Before he auditioned for two years to become president of the United States in a few days, someone named Barack Obama was a Chicago restaurant critic.

No, seriously.

Chicago TV station WTTW was constructing a new local show eight years ago, "Check, Please!" involving three regular citizens, each of whom would review their favorite eatery and help critique those of the others gathered around the table.

The show's producer knew Obama, then a state senator, and asked him to join. He did and reviewed Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop in his South Side Chicago legislative district.

But that episode was never broadcast, show executives now say, because Obama was too good and with his easy charm dominated that program that featured a firefighter and retail buyer as his co-critics.

You might guess what's coming. Now that episode will be finally broadcast on Jan. 16 as the show's 100th episode.

So, now The Ticket's giving you your own chance to critique the future president's critique. Let us know below how you think he did. We actually have two video excerpts today -- one right below here and another on the jump. Click on the "Read more" line to see it.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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