#Campaign: How Twitter is Playing Politics in 2012 ~ VIDEO

Twitter -- the next (digital) battleground state. The social media wars are already underway, just check out Twitter foes David Axelrod, of the Obama campaign, and Eric Fehrnstrom, with the Romney campaign. Axelrod tweeted this photo, saying "How loving owners transport their dogs" -- a shot at Mitt Romney, who in the 1980s transported his dog Seamus in a carrier strapped to the roof. Fehrnstrom shot back after someone realized that in his memoir Obama wrote about eating dog as a boy. Fehrnstrom re-tweeted Axelrod's photo with the message: "In hindsight, a chilling photo." It was a debate hashed out -- or hashtagged out -- entirely on Twitter.
Campaigns can use Twitter to get a message out quickly, bypassing television ads or media interviews. And the social media tool is becoming a good predictor of which way the wind is blowing in the election.
"The momentum that shows up in polls two or three days [later] is showing up in a matter of hours on Twitter," said Adam Sharp, Twitter's senior manager for government, news, and social innovation. "In the run up to the Arizona and Michigan primaries, where the polls were neck in neck, the day before you saw a little bit of a flattening in Rick Santorum's follower growth, and a surge in Mitt Romney's follower growth -- and he went on to win both primaries."
Twitter has exploded on Capitol Hill and state legislatures; more than 90 percent of senators, representatives, and governors are on Twitter.  Internationally, one in five world leaders has an account. More

Liberals abuse Twitter spam protection by targeting conservative users

There's a budding war in the Twitterverse as liberals are evidently carrying out organized attacks on conservative Twitter users by reporting their tweets as "spam," thus triggering an automated block on their accounts.

Apparently, a threshold has to be crossed as far as the number of tweets for the system to kick in, as well as the number of spam reports in order to ban the user so not all conservative Twitter activists are vulnerable. But several high profile conservatives have had their accounts blocked and trying to get them reinstated is proving to be a difficult matter.

But Chris Loesch, husband of talk radio host Dana Loesch has been banned, reinstated, and banned again several times in the last 48 hours.

While Twitter executives sleep on the job, conservatives online are battling not only Loesch's suspension, but the suspension of more than a dozen -- and possibly dozens, if not hundreds more -- innocent conservative social-media users who appear to have been maliciously targeted by Twitter abusers. The system is obviously broken and being exploited by vigilantes who oppose everything the engagement-enhancing ethos of Twitter stands for (or is supposed to stand for, anyway).

The targets are not big-time conservative celebs with large followings (which seems to be why Chris Loesch was targeted instead of his fellow conservative activist wife -- Breitbart.com editor/CNN contributor Dana Loesch -- whose high-follower Twitter account may be more immune to flag-spam attacks).

The progressives never expect pushback. But with the back-to-back suspensions of @freemarket_us and @chrisloesch, the conservative activist community online is banding together to Flag the Flag-Spammers for Twitter to see all in one place -- no, not by abusing the flag-spam system, but by naming names and showing Twitter the extent of the problem.

Shane Wright, who himself was the victim of a temporary suspension, has compiled a list of conservatives suspended at some point on Twitter.

A tidal wave of Tweets from conservative activists are trying to keep pace with the organized attack on free speech from the left. If you've got a Twitter account, it might be a good idea to join with others and tweet like crazy - and retweeting banned users tweets -- until Twitter can figure out how to stop the abuse.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/04/liberals_abuse_twitter_spam_protection_by_targeting_conservative_users.html#ixzz1tYXAkUFJ

Palin returns fire on Newsweek for calling Obama critics dumb !!!

Newsweek accomplished at least one thing by running a cover story calling the country’s critics of President Obama “dumb” — they awoke the mama grizzly.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took to Twitter on Tuesday to criticize the magazine and writer Andrew Sullivan for piece entitled, “Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb?” And her beef with the writer and liberal-leaning weekly is personal. Sullivan is infamous for calling into question whether Palin’s son, who has down syndrome, really is her own child.

Directing her message to “@Newsweek,” Palin wrote, “Know what’s truly ‘dumb’? Giving a cover story to the TrigTruther conspiracy kook writer who thinks I didn’t give birth to my son.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/17/palin-returns-fire-on-newsweek-for-calling-obama-critics-dumb/#ixzz1jkgkwO7w