Phoblographer*

Or someone who thinks she is a giant, anyway. I mean, really. Really? Really.

There's a particular kind of person out there who gets a high or believes such behavior gives them power and mystery to refrain from saying anything. There's winking and "oh, I know what's coming, and it's good." You know what? That's B.S. It's lame and narcissistic.

But the better question is: what's coming? Who dumps this news on July 3 (a Friday) during the still MJ dominated news cycles?

Oh, also narcissisitc: thinking you can serve better or whatever outside of the Governor's office. Never fear! She doesn't need a stupid office to keep working for you. By doing. Stuff. Or whatever. But she had to go! She's not one to be lame:

"Many just accept that lame duck status, and they hit that road. They draw a paycheck. They kind of milk it. And I'm not going to put Alaskans through that," she said.

WHAAAAAA? Also, should Alaska shorten its terms? If she's leaving soon, isn't she a lame duck now. There must be something skeletal in a closet, right? Because this first potential reason is just awful and incredibly insulting to Alaskans. Does she think she can win by calling some states - like her HOME STATE - irrelevant? I doubt she'll use this as a talking point.

"Alaska is an isolated stage from which to operate if you want to figure in American national politics. I don't know what she has in mind. Some TV show or some national radio show. There are opportunities for her, I'm sure."

But political analyst Larry Sabato, in Charlottesville, Va., said Palin's announcement left many confused.

"It's absolutely bizarre, and I think it eliminates her from serious consideration for the presidency in 2012," he said.

Palin said her family weighed heavily in her decision.

"I polled the most important people in my life, my kids, where the count was unanimous," she said. "Well, in response to asking, 'Hey, you want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children's future from outside the governor's office?' It was four yeses and one 'Hell, yeah!" And the 'Hell, yeah' sealed it."

But see, she's just got too much to do to have a full time job:

Fred Malek, a Republican strategist who has advised Palin over the past year, said Palin was "really unhappy with the way her life was going."

"She felt that the pressures of the job combined with her family obligations and the demands and desires to help other Republican candidates led her to decide not to run again. Once that decision was made, she realized, why not do it now and let the lieutenant governor take over and get a head start on his election," Malek said.

Back to narcissism: the other Republicans need her too much and it would be selfish for her to limit her winning influence to Alaska. She'd have to stay home to work on Alaska stuff. Awful!

I can imagine the Fox News soundbites on this and I think if I listen to them, my head may explode.

State government is crumbling around us. They are going to in-act themselves into either a part-time initiative that will pass because the ten voters who show up will be a combination of ignorant and wrong or - the best case scenario - a Constitutional convention because maybe we'll still have a government at the end.

Soooo much to say.

Maybe a quick mention: Don't elect Meg Whitman. Government finance and administration is not the same as business finance and administration. California if you go down this road again, then you get what you deserve. Now is a time for expertise - focused, specialized expertise. Attention to detail, procedure, process, respect for institutions.

Argh.

This is my third consecutive post about Twitter. And I say I don't like Twitter. Am I protesting too much? Eh, not really protesting at all.

But guess who's on top now? Iran still? No! Michael Jackson! Ha, Iranians, nice try, but we were always in love with the process story and not your substance. Good luck with your quest for democracy and legitimate elections. We wish you the best, really. But we need to grieve for a talented yet kind of distasteful performer we haven't heard on the radio in years (but haven't heard anything-but in the last 24 hours). No, no, you don't understand, I really, really grew up with him. So many memories.

(I've just offended people deeply, I'm sure. I'm sorry. I don't want to. But I don't want to keep seeing people weeping and lighting candles for Michael Jackson when I started the week by watching a video of a woman bleed to death out of her nose and mouth because she got out of her car in the wrong country at the wrong time. At least if we borrow her pain, it's for a more noble cause. Sometimes.)

Anyway - we'll discuss this article tomorrow. Or sometime soon anyway.

Bet you didn't wish to hear "the revolution will be blogged" again, did you? But now you should because apparently the alternative gives you just 140 characters of information. Not enough, y'all. Not enough.

As I was thinking - though we may never see it reported as such here, it's most likely that Twitter isn't the agent of change but the broadcaster of wishes for change to the West.

And I still think it would behoove us, as a country, to pay more attention to the message than the medium and the people rather than the process.

It's probably fair to say that, as of now, more Americans are aware of Twitter's role in recent Iranian election protests than they are the underlying complaint of many Iranians (btw: that's distrust in the results of their recent election that confirmed the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when many believed his opponent Mousavi would win).

Surfing between radio stations on my ride home, I counted no fewer than five stories about Twitter and other social networking sites and their role in the protests a half a world away.

But what does it all mean? And - can Twitter possibly mean the same thing to and for Americans that we claim it means to and for the Iranians?

What seems to get lost in this story is the story itself. The meta-story - the story of how we get the story is all over the place. Twitter allows Iranians to circumvent government blocked media, getting information out to the world's mainstream media. Mainstream media, left without any other channels, embraces tweets and the like - taking advantage of millions of modern day stringers, all of them freelance and few of them verified.

That's not to say the Iranian tweets are incredible - taken together, they likely paint a mostly accurate picture of the tumult facing the people. But recall for a moment that a few weeks ago, tweets help spread swine flu panic like, well, the flu.

Is it a question of context? Do Iranian tweets mean more because the situation is more important? Do we judge television's potential and power based on its first broadcasts or its best? Or maybe just its current content? I've long said that when discussion the power of blogs, one should simply replace the world blog with the word pencil because a blog is just another writing instrument: the power isn't in the medium, it's in the message conveyed.

Again, however, to compare blogs and tweets: blogs rise to prominence via the mainstream media. More people are drawn to them because of mainstream media, not in spite of it. There's a high percentage of the country that - despite watching the 24-hour cable networks, don't understand Twitter, won't log on to find out what it is, and probably lack internet access anyway. That population will continue to rely on the mainstream media to provide it with information on what is going in Iran (or with swine flu or Ashton Kucher's marital status or how far along in line Miley Cyrus is at Starbucks).

Blog is to pencil as Twitter is to . . . telephone? Maybe that is the best comparison. We're back to party lines and everything old is new again. The largest, operator-free phone line is at the disposal of any movement with the presence of mind to access it. Yesterday, Kucher, today, Iranian's hungry for electoral integrity. I'd give Twitter less credit and Iranian's more. Information wants to be free and will find a way out (uh, except in the DPRK, but there's always an exception).

Had Iran held this election a year ago, it would've been Facebooked; two years, MySpaced; six months from now, it will be broadcast via something only your still-inventing it former roommate and beta-testing-it neighborgeeky teen know about. The revolution will be something-ed from now on, that much is guaranteed.

In the meantime, however, I'd like to know more about what is going on in Iran than how we're coming to know about it.

I've always loved Joel Stein, even as the poor guy gets booted from one major publication to another. In fact, I once actually exchanged emails with him, and considered it a highlight of my technological life.

I like his take here on Cali's stupid love affair with voting. We do it all the time. We vote to screw things up. Or we vote and screw things up - your call.

The amusing presentation comes when you note the idiotic extra links Time Magazine throws in after random paragraphs proving that computer generated linkage yields uniformly funny results.

I take exception to giving some dude in LA credit for establishing a "Vote No on Everything" campaign. I've been doing that - and saying that - for years. LA Doctor: you don't have the corner on reasonable government views!

So, what's worse? The thing in the box that plays on the commonly misunderstood technical meaning of "pandemic" or THE THING IN THE BOX THAT SAYS WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

I would say neither story is cause for concern at this point. It may be cause to appropriate more money to NASA, however. (btw: I thought 5 billion years was about the point the sun was supposed to supernova and swallow us before shrinking to a cold white dwarf anyway. So, shrug.)