Hawaii Governor Didn't Correct False Missile Alert Sooner Because He Didn't Know His Twitter Password (washingtonpost.com) 189
An anonymous reader shares a WashingtonPost report: Minutes after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency mistakenly sent a missile alert at 8:07 a.m. on Jan. 13 -- terrifying residents and visitors across the state -- some officials, such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, rushed to Twitter to reassure everyone it was a mistake. But one Twitter account was deafeningly silent for 17 minutes: that of Hawaii Gov. David Ige. Though Ige was informed by the state's adjutant general that the alert was false two minutes after it was sent, he waited until 8:24 a.m. to tweet, "There is NO missile threat." On Monday, after he gave the State of the State address in which he avoided the subject of the missile alert fiasco, reporters demanded an explanation for that long silence. Ige's answer: He couldn't log in to Twitter. "I have to confess that I don't know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that's one of the changes that I've made," Ige said.
Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
It's astonishing that he thinks a simple "I forgot my password, teacher" is a proper excuse for failing to inform people that they're NOT about to be nuked into oblivion!
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear hear! It's astonishing that he thinks a simple "I forgot my password, teacher" is a proper excuse for failing to inform people that they're NOT about to be nuked into oblivion!
It's more amazing to me that anyone would expect a governor to use twitter to notify people about anything. Government folks shouldn't be using partisan websites to disseminate information, they should be using acceptable and established channels. In other news, the governor of Hawaii still hasn't posted to Slashdot on the matter. Maybe the misses are still inbound.. sheesh.
He should have issued a quick news conference and or radio broadcast. If it was more important than that, then the Emergency Alert System. That's my opinion.
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, what self respecting nuclear aggressor wouldn't simultaneously hack or at least DoS local official's twitter accounts? You think social media is going to stay up in a real war waged by a competent adversary? Nerp. It'll crash at the most critical moment. It isn't defense-hardened, folks.
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He should have issued a quick news conference and or radio broadcast.
That's a great way of getting information out 10minutes AFTER most news outlets have published a tweet.
Go to major news sites right now and find out about the tsunami warning. I challenge you to find one that doesn't reference Twitter. Here's the first I found: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/0... [cnn.com] the tweet is half way down the page.
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't find it odd that he would use Twitter to correct a bad announcement - in situations like that you want to get on as many channels as you can, and lots of people will get Twitter with more immediacy than radio or TV. Nor can I get too worked up about him not knowing his password. I have seldom used accounts where I don't know the password, and would need access to my primary machine to get at my password file.
This seems like the textbook example of a learning experience. A brand new system encountered a failure mode they hadn't anticipated, and they are going through lessons learned to correct for the future.
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I don't find it odd that he would use Twitter to correct a bad announcement - in situations like that you want to get on as many channels as you can,
To paraphrase an old Internet axiom: "on twitter nobody knows you are a dog."
There is an official channel for issuing these warnings. Why would you trust someone on Twitter telling you that the official announcement was wrong?
"Dear, come down to the shelter, a nuke is on the way!"
"No, dear, @DaveIge38 on Twitter says it is a false alarm. I'm staying right he(&%@{{{{{
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Despite multiple TOS violations, they've not disabled Donald Trump's account. That's hardly "far left".
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You just noticed that ? As Heinlein foretold, Welcome to the Crazy Years. . .
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Also, is it necessarily a bad thing that he can't tweet random thoughts that come into his head? Having a staff member do it for him acts as a nice sanity check and brain fart HEPA filter.
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point, a communications channel becomes 'official' and 'important'. I would say that when that threshold is crossed, it's a really good idea to have a couple of people involved to ensure every t is crossed and every i is dotted.
And I also think that the fact that Twitter is considered an emergency communications channel AT ALL is disturbing.
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
This boggles me as well. A channel this critical to communication, in previous decades, would be regulated and well funded, similar to 911 centers. Twitter is more suited for what someone talks about breakfast, or how they are mad at a ref's call during a football game, as opposed to mission-critical communication. Especially for the fact that not everyone follows the governor, or state officials.
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Why couldn't his "no attack" message have gone out over the very same system that issued the "not a test" nuke warning?
Does the alert system rely on twitter for updates?
Why can a message that says "this is not a test" go out based on a single button push?
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Because the system can only send one of a small number of pre-defined messages and "my bad... ignore the previous message" wasn't one of them.
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without even looking at the short list of pre-defined messages, are you saying there was NO other possible message that would have been more appropriate than the one that went out initially?
i mean, even "this is a test" or "hay guyz it's ok stop putting your kids into sewers right now" or would be preferable to the message that went out.
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They eventually used the same system to send out a retraction, it just took 45 minutes to figure out how.
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He could have said a huge asteroid was incoming and would liquefy the planet and wipe out all life, whether in a sewer or not.
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Because the system can only send one of a small number of pre-defined messages and "my bad... ignore the previous message" wasn't one of them.
This is no doubt a security feature meant to keep erroneous messages from being sent out by mistake.
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And that the 'official' news channel cannot be unilaterally re-prioritized by the carriers to make room for streaming cat videos.
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You'd think that e.g. a president of the US could be bothered to carry the little card with him needed to authorize a nuclear strike should things go bad in a hurry. More than a couple of people involved in getting that one right, and yet some recent residents couldn't be bothered. Rather more important than a twitter password (OK, that has me wondering what Trump would tweet as he launched the nukes).
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>OK, that has me wondering what Trump would tweet as he launched the nukes
"Showing little Rocket Man how it's done. I start the best nukular wars, believe me. #MAGA"
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"#NAGA" surely?
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You'd think that e.g. a president of the US could be bothered to carry the little card with him needed to authorize a nuclear strike should things go bad in a hurry.
It is more complicated than "the little card". It is called the Nuclear Football [wikipedia.org] and it does, indeed, travel with the President wherever he goes. He doesn't have to "be bothered" to carry it, there is someone assigned to do that.
More than a couple of people involved in getting that one right, and yet some recent residents couldn't be bothered.
Which ones might you be referring to? The fact that you don't see it every time the media shows the President waving to the crowd doesn't mean it isn't there. I would expect that nobody is keeping you briefed on where the football is because you don't have the clearance or a need to
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Why would he rely exclusively on Twitter when there's an entire industry whose job it is to disseminate information?
When you say "industry", are you referring to those who still broadcast old-fashioned signals to boxes that the cord-cutting generation doesn't use anymore?
Kind of hard to "disseminate" information to the masses who tend to now recognize only two forms of communication; social media and internet streaming.
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Local news outlets transmit over the air (TV and radio)....
TV and radio? You mean Netflix and Spotify?
..., plus they have their own online presence as well.
Those who have invested in an online presence do. And if it's not on a YouTube or Facebook live stream, you might as well be offline.
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Fortunately, many news stations also have YouTube channels.
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Even if you cut the cable, you should be able to receive local channels OTA.
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old-fashioned signals to boxes that the cord-cutting generation doesn't use anymore?
SMS messages and the 'old-fashioned' EAS broadcasts [wikipedia.org] serve only to direct the population to tune to news sources for further information and instructions. It boggles my mind that the people conducting the system test would not have contact information at hand with which they could have announced the mistake. And that people receiving what appeared to be a real alert would not tune to the local news as instructed.
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When you say "industry", are you referring to those who still broadcast old-fashioned signals to boxes that the cord-cutting generation doesn't use anymore?
In the US we have something called "freedom", which means you are free to not listen to most emergency notification systems. If you choose not to get weather alerts by not owning or using a NOAA weather radio with such features, you are free to do so. If you don't want to watch TV, ditto.
Kind of hard to "disseminate" information to the masses who tend to now recognize only two forms of communication; social media and internet streaming.
In the US, modern cell phones have an Emergency Alerts system. There are several options, like en/disabling Amber alerts, but you cannot disable the "Presidential Alert". It is hard not to notice your cellphone screeching a
Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well (Score:5, Interesting)
BINGO!
I'm not on Twitter. Neither is anyone else in my family. Because state government wrongly assumes that all its citizens are willing to be interrupted by tweets all day long, those that aren't are just acceptable losses?
One might assume that DHS and FEMA would have drawn up suggestions for state and local officials on how to deal with emergency notifications like this. But it appears that neither of those organizations seem to be able to do their jobs.
When we lived in S. OH (many years ago), the entire southern half of the state was paralyzed for almost two weeks due to an ice storm that knocked out power. How did local government inform citizens on the progress of the repairs and when areas might expect power to be restored? They freakin' didn't. The idiots in the public safety department had no plan in place. None. Did they think to pass information along to the local radio stations? Hell no. It was like living a scene out of "Airplane!": "No... that's just what they'd be expecting us to do."
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To be fair to Hawaii - the proper, non-twitter method was used to send the missile alert. That same system had a way to say "oops", but bureaucracy happened. The tweet would have been an improvisation, not the intended system, for cancelling the alert.
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BINGO!
I'm not on Twitter. Neither is anyone else in my family. Because state government wrongly assumes that all its citizens are willing to be interrupted by tweets all day long, those that aren't are just acceptable losses?
Don't modern smartphones have the ability to receive "emergency communications" in a manner completely separate from any social network? Why didn't they use that communication method? It's an app on my phone and I cannot uninstall it (unless I wanted to root the phone that is). I can turn off updates to select types of emergencies, but there is one category "Messages from the President" that cannot be disabled. "Impending thermonuclear war" seems like an appropriate use for this app.
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Twitter isn't that popular. Especially for emergency information. In an emergency, I would check these sources in this order.
Alarm System, Phone Alert, Radio, Television, Direct Call, Official news web sites. Social media would be the last place to look for factual information.
He should had corrected the Alarm system and Phone Alerts first, then made a general call to media outlets in the area, then update social media.
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Why would he rely exclusively on Twitter when there's an entire industry whose job it is to disseminate information?
Phone number to the media? Are you a time traveller from the 90s? The only thing the "news media" does now is publish tweets wrapped in clickbait headlines.
No I'm not being facetous. Let's have a look shall we. I heard there's a tsunami warning current. Let's check CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/0... [cnn.com] Oh look, their source: https://twitter.com/SF_emergen... [twitter.com]
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Why would he rely exclusively on Twitter when there's an entire industry whose job it is to disseminate information?
We really need to consider IQ tests for government officials. I can think of a half dozen better ways of getting this information out immediately to keep people from shitting themselves and panicking, without putting down my sandwich.
Honestly twitter is the last the last tool on my mind since I still do not know anyone who has twitter.
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You would not be constipated if there was an impending nuclear missile strike.
fair enough ... (Score:3)
Fair enough ... I would consider not knowing your Twitter password a badge of honor (not having an account even more so).
Alerting broadcast media might have been a better use of time (if he wasn't already doing that) though.
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Not having a Twitter account is a badge of honor.
Having a Twitter account but not knowing your password is a badge of shame. It most likely means you set the app to remember your password so you don't have to type it in every time to login. Meaning anyone you lend your phone to, or steals your phone and manages to bypass its unlock security, can send out tweets in your name.
Apps which access pe
It is really scary! (Score:2)
And these jokers enact laws for "ensuring" cyber security.
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I thought the scary thing was a populace so incredibly stupid that it wants a government to use a very unreliable and insecure system of social media for official announcements
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All that stands between an official statement from authorized government official and a possible malicious docxing is a weak, guessable twitter password. It might even be his zip code. And any Twitter employee or contractor can spoof any user account!
And these jokers enact laws for "ensuring" cyber security.
If you think this is scary, you should see the POTUS Twitter feed...
NATIONALIZE TWITTER (Score:2)
He should have called President Trump... (Score:2)
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To the great lament of his own staff
FTFY
Huh (Score:2)
Incoming ICBM and Twitter (Score:2)
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Dude, I was there, and your sentiment was shared by many. Saturday afternoon at a flea market in Ocean View, south tip of Big Island, everyone was stoned.
Then again, they live in the shadow of a giant active volcano, so maybe being stoned all the time is warranted...
Governor What? (Score:3)
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Umn .. Did his phone work? (Score:3)
Did his god damn phone work? Does he know that he can push buttons on it and when done in the correct order he can talk to someone? Wait, he probably didn't know the phone number.
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and when done in the correct order he can talk to someone?
Yes which is why it took so long to get the information out. Calling individual media outlets is an incredibly inefficient way of disseminating information. For better or worse in any emergency twitter will get the information to a wider audience and will be picked up by the media faster than anything else these days.
I heard there's a tsunami warning in the USA.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/0... [cnn.com] : Count 1 official Twitter source
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... [bbc.com] : Count 1 semi-official Twitter source, 2 unoff
Twitter is a terrible idea (Score:2)
For better or worse in any emergency twitter will get the information to a wider audience and will be picked up by the media faster than anything else these days.
You've apparently forgotten that they have a system that is able to contact EVERY PHONE IN THE STATE. In what universe is Twitter more efficient than that? Furthermore Twitter is hardly trustworthy nor does everyone have a Twitter account (I do not have one) so it's worse for me than the media.
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You've apparently forgotten that they have a system that is able to contact EVERY PHONE IN THE STATE.
The system that wasn't working, and wasn't able to send out the correction? Is that the system you're talking about? Great system that.
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Regarding speed - Even if I did have a Twitter account, do I know what the governor's username is? Do I know that the governor's account is the one that will be used to send the message? Do I know that this kind of emergency alert will be disseminated on Twitter at all?
I'd be expecting it through a more official channel. You know, like TV or radio, where emergency broadca
Who cares. Non-issue. (Score:2)
It's a good sign that the man isn't into Twitter so he can forget his password.
There were other people going around doing their jobs; it's not his job-- that is why somebody doing their job INFORMED HIM of the problem because nobody can be all places at once.
Two parts to the job)
1) Explain what is going on (being in charge = informed or investigating) with some authority behind what you know (supposed to.)
2) Plan how to resolve the problem and prevent future repeats. This step is often skipped because peop
Kiss your ass goodby (Score:2)
Why didn't he just (Score:2)
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Why didn't he just phone the Russian embassy and ask them?
He was at Sarah Palin's house and was looking out his window at Russia.
Too bad his login wasn't "Aloha" (Score:2)
Yellow sticky note (Score:2)
He needs to write it down on a yellow sticky note stuck to his monitor. Obs. Good enough for the operations manager Jeffrey Wong, good enough for him. https://qz.com/1181763/hawaiis... [qz.com]
Not everyone uses Twitter. (Score:2)
So I don't have a Twitter account and have no plans to get one. Nothing against it just have no use for it. So using Twitter to communicate to me is going to be ineffective at best because the information will be at least 2nd hand by the time I get it. Twitter is a terrible substitute since why would anyone believe a message over twitter over the official warning system?
The correct answer is to send out another message on the same system that obviously has the ability to contact every cell phone in the s
This is OES job (Score:2)
I don't twit (Score:2)
Once I asked why I should have a Twitter account, and was told, "to get news quicker". My response was, "Why? The 'instant' news is always wrong! I'd rather wait so there's at least a chance it might be somewhat accurate".
It's on that Yellow Sticky Note !!! (Score:2)
In reference to a screen grab (in another news article) of the command center in which behind the dept head is clearly a yellow stick with a password on it. The stick note clearly states "password."
The person in charge of media rep later replied "that's to some old non-essential system - nothing important" Keeping it for a friend.
Apparently - it might be the govn'rs missing Twitter password. :-P
Just Put It on a Sticky! (Score:2)
Nuclear Shelter (Score:2)
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Because this person that does not use twitter things it is the only way to reach people.
Try calling the radio and tv stations. The Governor of Hawaii does have a staff, right? They do have phones, don't they?
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Try calling the radio and tv stations.
I spend a lot more time by my phone than I do watching TV/listening to radio. Twitter wouldn't have reached me unless DJT tweeted the all-clear, but since the alert reached everyone over their phones that does seem like the right vector for correcting it.
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Try calling the radio and tv stations.
I spend a lot more time by my phone than I do watching TV/listening to radio. Twitter wouldn't have reached me unless DJT tweeted the all-clear, but since the alert reached everyone over their phones that does seem like the right vector for correcting it.
Personally, whenever I get a storm alert I turn on the TV, radio, or get on the internet to stream a local radio or TV station to confirm what's happening and the area that the alert covers. I certainly don't check Twitter as a huge percentage of what's there is false or misleading. Plus, a twitter account is more likely to be hacked than a live news feed.
BTW: practically every vehicle has a radio in it and most local stations offer streaming. The point is that you are a lot closer to a radio for much of
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...practically every vehicle has a radio in it and most local stations offer streaming. The point is that you are a lot closer to a radio for much of the time than you think.
I'm aware that cars typically have radios. I'm in my car less than an hour a day. I'm next to my phone more than 20. If there's an impending missile strike, I'll likely be seeking out an emergency broadcast, but I probably won't jump in my car.
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Apparently the big story here is this: though he couldn't do it, he thought he should have used Twitter, instead of the state's website or the directly contacting the news media (by email or phone) or something like that. Twitter is what came to his mind. You sure that isn't weird/interesting?
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Apparently the big story here is this: though he couldn't do it, he thought he should have used Twitter, instead of the state's website or the directly contacting the news media
No, the story here was that when the news media ASKED him why he DIDN'T use Twitter, he told them he had forgotten his password. That doesn't say he wasn't communicating in other ways. It doesn't say that he thought that Twitter was the right way to communicate. It just deals with some allegedly horrific 17 minute gap "in the tape" of tweets where the Governor did not send a tweet when others were. Oh my God. The Governor didn't tweet. How awful! We could have all died!
It isn't the Governor's job to call a
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The system is not there for people like you.
It is a "Dimocracy - government of the dim, by the dim, for the dim!"
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What are the chances that these two independent errors happened near the same times?
Very good actually.
You climb down stairs everyday whithout problem. Yet, if you hear that someone has hurt him/herself falling down stairs, you can't help but think about it the next time you end up at the top of a flight of stairs, thus greatly increasing the risk of a misstep and a fall.
The guy in Japan had heard of the incident in Hawaii, and the stress of not wanting to make the same mistake, even if completely unconscious, greatly increased the risk of actually repeating the same mistake.
It's a very we
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slashdot is antisocial media.
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Re: Twitter? (Score:2)
But you're reading and contributing to a social platform and gathering information from it, the way its editors and users shape it ... socially.
So an old radio or TV call-in show is social media because users and editors contribute to it and shape it?
That seems like a pretty dumb definition.
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It is not an official news channel, but it is an official communication channel for most city/state leaders. A lot of people follow them so when something like this happens getting the word out quickly through all communication channels should happen sooner rather than later.
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Effective != Official
Whether Twitter is an official channel or not is irrelevant. If it is effective, and you are trying to recover from an error, by all means use it.
I don't use Twitter enough for it to be effective for me, and I don't follow the governor of my state, but for many people it would be effective.
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Whether Twitter is an official channel or not is irrelevant. If it is effective, and you are trying to recover from an error, by all means use it.
Read TFS. It says that officials were using it. The question was why the Governor didn't use it for a whole 17 minutes. OMG. Other officials were using it, and were almost certainly using the official twitter accounts that people who want to use twitter to get official warnings would be following. One should not expect to follow the Governor as the sole source of official warnings. That's just stupid.
and I don't follow the governor of my state, but for many people it would be effective.
The local city police have a twitter account and use it for stuff. I don' t know what stuff. After I set it
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If the highest ranking government official can't speak to the populace (or is it subjects?) without Twitter, then the US is doomed.
Blame the media. Twitter's the only way DJT can get his message to the people without having his facts corrected.
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The highest ranked government official routinely speaks random thoughts on Twitter. It's only the lower ranked officials that see the point in avoiding confusion, inflammatory statements, annoying nuclear-armed dictators, etc.
Reader alert: The above post should be sarcastic.
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Governor. I've found your post it note.
Your password is
warningpoint2
Happy to help! [businessinsider.com]
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Nope, I couldn't vote for her. I think it's time to replace all members of congress. It's also time for term limits.
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Term limits - a method for ensuring that right about the time someone is good at their job they are forced to leave it.
There is a reason why we don't have term limits in industry, and that is because we value experience. If you want to find a way to lessen the advantage of incumbency, find a way that doesn't ensure we have perpetual neophytes.
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I can count the number of people who are "good at their job" in congress on the fingers of one hand. Are you aware that congress has about a 9% approval rating? If most of these people were something other than worthless, their approval rating might be higher. I'd rather have perpetual neophytes than perpetual slobs whose goal seems to be to get rich at the expense of the tax payer.
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I can count the number of people who are "good at their job" in congress on the fingers of one hand. Are you aware that congress has about a 9% approval rating?
Of course "Congress" has a low approval rating. Most of the members of Congress do not represent you -- they represent their own districts and their own people and they work to bring resources (jobs, money, etc) to their people. If they don't, then everyone else will get all the good stuff, the people of that district will get angry, and they'll not vote for that member of congress for reelection.
The funny thing is... most people really like THEIR particular member of congress. It's the people from every ot
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The theory behind congressional term limits is that the job of a congressperson is to accumulate pork for their district and their campaign contributors by screwing everyone else, and thus we're better off with them being bad at their jobs.
Unfortunately, I think term limits would just give us politicians even more concerned about pleasing their sponsors so they can pick up a cushy advisory
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Maybe he does. Doesn't mean the "moral crusaders" don't need to eat crow too.