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President Trump has decided that it is important that he keep tweeting from his personal Twitter account because it allows him to speak directly to the American people outside of the filter of the mainstream media, by which he means the medias pesky insistence on fact-checking his comments and including unflattering news in analysis of his presidency. Over the weekend, Trumptook this defense of his social-media use to a new place: Not only is his tweeting perfectly fine for a president, but it is defining what it means to be presidential.

In a sense, this is probably true, for better or worse.

But Trumps defense of his tweeting depends largely on the idea that hes unusually skilled at social media, playing the strings of Twitter like the first-chair violinist at the New York Philharmonic.

What if, instead, Trumps not that great at Twitter? What if Barack Obama is better?

Allow us to present that case.

Overall, Trumps two accounts his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, and his presidential one, @POTUS get more retweets in a month than Obamas (@BarackObama and @POTUS44, respectively). (Were using retweets as a metric here for two reasons. First, its accessible data. Second, it captures one aspect of the point of social media: social interaction.) Trumphas used @POTUS only since January, since that was when he was inaugurated. Obama hasused only @BarackObama since then, retaking the account from the advocacy organization Organizing for Action, which had been renting the account during his two terms in office. (The @POTUS44 account is an archive of Obamas official White House tweets while in office.)

The exception came in January, when Obamas farewell tweets got a ton of attention.

Thats simply a raw count of retweets, the total for each tweet added to the others for that month. So we have to note: Trump also tweets far more than does Obama.

If we look at the number of retweets per tweet how much engagement each tweet gets on average we see that Obama actually fares much better than does Trump.

Trumps totals are actually hurt by how much he tweets. The more he tweets in a week, the lower his number of retweets per tweet (over the past month).

The dichotomy in where each president is successful poses an interesting question. Which of these demonstrates a more effective use of Twitter: tweeting a lot to rack up retweets, or getting more retweets on each tweet? I posed this question on Twitter, in an unscientific poll, without mentioning the point I was investigating.

More than two-thirds of respondents figured that more retweets per tweet was the preferable metric. Meaning that Obama is using Twitter more effectively.

Theres a case to be made that more total retweets in a month means that more people are seeing each tweet. That may be true. But it may also mean that the user who tweets more is getting the same, smaller group of people to retweet his tweets over and over meaning that the overall audience for each tweet is smaller.

If we look at the most-retweeted tweets from each account (extending back a year or for the period that each president controlled the account), the top 10 tweets from Obamas presidential account racked up far more retweets than any from Trump. That, objectively, is a bigger audience on a per-tweet basis.

That includes this tweet, which is the most retweeted from Obamas time in office.

Obamas top seven tweets from his time as president all earned more retweets than the top 10 tweets from either of Trumps two accounts.

Some may argue that Trump, unlike Obama, actually tweets his own tweets, with Obamas being crafted by committee. Its not clear whether thats still true for Obama, but, even assuming that it is, this ignores the role that Trumps social-media director, Dan Scavino, plays in his use of Twitter. The early morning TV-watching tweets are probably Trump, but many arent.

Obamas most-retweeted tweet overall came during the 2012 campaign. Until Ellen DeGeneres tweeted a selfie at the Oscars in 2014, it held the title for most-retweeted in history. The person who formulated that tweet, Obamas 2012 social-media director,Laura Olin, told The Washington Post over Twitter (of course) that she would have preferred more cumulative retweets than a higher per-tweet average.

Its always nice when a given post pops because of a certain moment, she said, but ongoing high levels of engagement indicate that people care about the meat-and-potatoes governing stuff, too, not just the cute Happy birthday Michelle messages which are wonderful but dont necessarily serve to convey shared values or further an agenda to make peoples lives better.

In that sense, Trump is outperforming his predecessor.

Whats more, the numbers above exclude the awareness brought to Trumps tweets when they are provocative enough to earn him attention from the mainstream media.

Thats the sort of coverage that Trump never complains about.

See original here:
Resolved: Barack Obama is better at Twitter than Donald Trump - Washington Post

By Margie Mason By Margie Mason July 1

JAKARTA, Indonesia Following another week of dust-ups between the media and President Trump, his predecessor shared a bit of wisdom Saturday from the other side of the world about tolerance and taking the daily news cycle in stride.

I wasnt worried about what was in the newspapers today, former president Barack Obama said during a nostalgic visit to Indonesias capital, his childhood home. What I was worried about was, What are they going to write about me 20 years from now when I look back?

Obama was greeted by a crowd of thousands, including leaders, students and businesspeople, in Jakarta, where he opened the Fourth Congress of Indonesian Diaspora.

He reminisced about moving to Jakarta in 1967 when he was just 6 years old, shouting, Indonesia bagian dari diri saya! or Indonesia is part of me!

Obama lived in the country with his mother, an anthropologist, and his Indonesian stepfather. The couple split up after his half sister was born, and Obama moved back to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his grandparents.

My time here made me cherish respect for peoples differences, he said, noting how he and his family had just visited two of the most treasured ancient temples Borobudur, a Buddhist complex, and the Hindu compound of Prambanan in the worlds most populous Muslim country.

Obamas speech came on the final leg of his 10-day vacation in Indonesia. In addition to visiting the temples in the city of Yogyakarta on the island of Java, he and his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia, also went rafting and toured the resort island of Bali. On Friday, he met Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the grand Bogor Palace in West Java, just outside Jakarta.

Obama largely stayed away from U.S. politics and the Trump administration, but he did tout one of his accomplishments while in office.

In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history about climate change, an agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership, can still give our children a fighting chance, he said.

Trump shocked many countries last month by announcing he was pulling out of the accord. He has also had a difficult relationship with members of the news media and was recently condemned by Democrats and Republicans for a tweet that attacked a female MSNBC host.

Obama stressed the importance of stepping away from news sites where only like-minded views are shared, and he warned about social media giving rise to resentment of minorities and bad treatment of people.

He urged the country to be a light of democracy and to never stop embracing differences. Indonesia has faced a rise in Islamist radicalism and anti-gay attacks and was recently condemned by rights groups for jailing Jakartas former governor, an ethnic Chinese Christian, for blasphemy.

The spirit of this country has to be one of tolerance. Its enshrined in Indonesias constitution, its symbolized by mosques and temples and churches beside each other, Obama said. That spirit is one of the defining things about Indonesia. It is one of the most important characteristics to set as an example for other Muslim countries around the world.

Associated Press

Excerpt from:
Obama pushes tolerance, respect in childhood home Jakarta - Washington Post

The Trump administration said in a Texas court filing that it would rewrite an Obama-era rulemaking that dramatically expanded the number of workers covered by federal overtime rules, the latest example of the administration rolling back rules put in place by the previous White House.

Under former President Barack Obama, the Labor Department last year doubled to $47,000 the minimum annual salary threshold a worker must make before he or she can be deemed a "managerial" worker and therefore exempt from federal law requiring that they are paid time and a half after working 40 hours in a week. Business groups sued to overturn the rule, which they said raised the rate far too much. A Texas court struck it down on procedural grounds late last year. The Obama administration swiftly appealed but was unable to resolve the issue before the new administration took over.

That put the legal defense of the rule in the hands of the Trump administration, raising the question of what it would do. During his Senate confirmation hearing in May, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said the overtime rule was due for an update but the Obama administration had raised the minimum too high.

That's precisely what Justice Department lawyers argued in a court filing Friday. They defended the prior administration from charges that it violated the Administrative Procedures Act, which covers federal rulemakings, but also said the current administration would rethink the rule.

"The department has decided not to advocate for the specific salary level ($913 per week) set in the final rule at this time and intends to undertake further rulemaking to determine what the salary level should be. Accordingly, the department requests that this court address only the threshold legal question of the department's statutory authority to set a salary level," the lawyers stated. Restarting the public question process is a prerequisite before the department can overturn it and establish a new threshold.

The Justice Department did not indicate what the administration thought the new level would be.

Business groups applauded the move. "It's great to see a Department of Labor finally taking the time to fully evaluate the impact its regulations will have on businesses. Secretary Acosta has once again proven he is a thoughtful leader who will work in the best interest of the American worker," said Angelo Amador, executive director of the Restaurant Law Center, part of the National Restaurant Association.

Supporters of the Obama rule said the Trump White House should leave well enough alone. "I am deeply disappointed by the Department of Labor's refusal to defend the threshold set by the Obama administration, which would have protected 13 million middle-class workers. The overtime salary threshold has been so low for so long that most employees are not even aware that they're losing out on the pay or the time with their families they have earned," said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif.

Originally posted here:
Trump administration will rewrite Obama-era overtime rule - Washington Examiner

Screenshot by the author of J.A. Boyds tweet

Recently, J.A. Boyd II, a youth pastor for a Baptist church in Newnan GA, tweeted an image of what he proclaimed to be the official White House painting of former US President Barack Obama. Boyds accompanying paean in praise of the painting is a single word: BRUH!!!!

Obama does look resplendent in the beige suit he once famously wore to a press conference in 2014, with just the hint of a smile creasing the area around his mouth. A Dutch artist, Edwin van den Dikkenberg, who has made that portrait in oil, has skillfully apprehended Obamas combination of scholarly aloofness, confidence, and openness to being charmed. In this image there is also the resolute idealism, and curiosity that when I saw him in public appearances would often easily slide into a quizzical grin somewhere between empathic embarrassment on someone elses behalf and outright dismissal as unworthy of further engagement. It is a striking image, but reportedly this is not the official White House portrait.

Still, it made me think about what contemporary artist would do best with this assignment. Of course, I immediately imagined Chris Ofili, the heavily stylized watercolor portraits he made mostly of women in the late 1990s. Ofili would give Obama back that superhero quality that initially imbued his presidency, making him an iconic black man in a tie-dyed dashiki, all coffee-with-milk brown skin and high forehead with gleaming eyes.

Better yet, Mickalene Thomas would transform the cool professor into a funkafied, stone cold, groovy cat reclining on a chaise lounge in the oval office, the walls doused in psychedelic patterns and sparkles. Though Thomas most often employs her powers of bringing her subjects sexiness to the surface with women, she might be talked into doing the same with the former president, turning him into the dancer he sometimes revealed himself to be: giving a little shoulder shimmy and a two-step, gray hair rendered in glitter like an astral field.

Kehinde Wiley is also an option. Of course, his portrait accomplished in the style of courtly painting would gives us the triumphant Obama, the Nobel prize winner, the man to pull us back from the brink of financial meltdown. However, the drawbacks are that such a portrait would only emphasize that confidence that too often was read as haughtiness, and if Wiley works like he usually does the overall physical comportment might look too staged, too stiff.

Dawoud Bey could make a wonderfully intimate photograph of Obama, since they are already familiar with each other after Bey took a picture of the thenpre-gray senator from Illinois back in 2007. His portrait would be staid, quietly dignified, but forthright letting through the weariness and perhaps even the inner fortitude of the man who throughout the tenure of his presidency was consistently publicly called a Muslim terrorist from Kenya.

The artist William Villalongo could actually dig into those African roots, via Obamas father (Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a Kenyan senior governmental economist), back to a storied past that tends to conflate all the technological achievements made on the continent and shunt them through the legends and accounts of life in Egypt. Villalongo did that digging soon after Obamas historic election, taking an image of the president and making him a kind of celestial mlange with Nefertiti, an Egyptian queen, who along with her husband Akhenaten, anEgyptian Pharaoh, was known for fomenting a profound change in religious practices within Egypt. Despite all the shortcomings of his presidency, such as portrait would affirm the fact that change did indeed occur with his presidency.

Lastly, we could stretch the boundaries of the portrait and instead of a painting or photograph, make it a black-and-white film montage by Steve McQueen, in which there is a long shot of him standing by the window in the White House, peering out in silence while in the foreground a clump of advisers and cabinet members talk among themselves, until Obama turns and walks towards them and the camera and the part like the Red Sea and they are suddenly quiet, waiting for him to speak.

See more here:
Which Artist Should Create Obama's Official Presidential Portrait? - Hyperallergic

The Energy Department is gearing up to request information about the agencys energy efficiency rule for air compressors, indicating itcould consider rewriting an Obama-era regulation the Trump administration froze earlier this year.

In a draft copyof a Federal Register filing, DOE officials say they want to collect information related to the efficiency ruling and also delay implementationof the rule later this year while reviewing the details.

In the filing, DOE said it has received correspondence, raising concerns that certain issues and information may not have been fully considered during the original rule making proceeding and also indicating further clarification may be needed to implement the rule as adopted.

The Obama administration finalized its rule for compressors in early January, establishing procedures for testing compressors'energy efficiency and making other technical changes.

The rule was one of several caught up in a regulatory freeze instituted by President Trump after he took office, and administration officials never published the final rule in the Federal Register.

In March, before that freeze ended, DOE said it would continue to postpone efficiency testing procedures for compressors, as well as those for walk-in coolers and freezers, central air conditioners and heat pumps.

Last month, a group of state attorneys general and environmental groups sued over the Trump administrations decision to stop the rule and others from taking effect.

Read the original post:
Energy Department to reconsider Obama energy efficiency rule - The Hill