Obama victory spins a web of tears

Magic Johnson went on Larry King last Wednesday evening. King asked him what he thought of the election.

“Oh man. Last night I cried like a baby, Larry.”

Magic? Crying? Is Mercury in retrograde or something?

Then Will Smith went on Oprah. “Did you cry?” Oprah asked. “Did you cry? Did you cry?” (She had cried in front of millions during President-elect Obama’s  election night speech, so presumably she wanted to know if Smith, an action hero, was in the Crybaby Club.)

He was.

And then there was Jesse Jackson. And Colin Powell. And Michael Salerno.

Who? Oh yeah, Salerno’s an IT manager out of Mahopac, N.Y. Barbecue enthusiast, avid reader, father of triplets. He wasn’t on TV like the other guys, and unlike the others,  he’s white — but you can still see a picture of him getting teary on election night, because he posted it on Flickr.

“I have never been more proud to be an American,” the caption says, and “yes, I’m crying.”

I found Salerno’s pic, along with dozens of other crying photos and videos, on Flickr and YouTube after several friends told me they’d cried on election night. Two of them were guys I’ve known for a decade without seeing them cry a single time.

In one YouTube video, a blue-eyed  guy named Sam with big tattoos and no shirt completely loses it, bawling wordlessly for seven minutes during Obama’s victory speech: a classic.

In another, a pretty 18-year-old girl named Whitney cries in a smiling way that looks almost like laughter. “I’m such a loser,” she says. “I’m so happy.”

“I cried too,” wrote four of the video’s 11 commenters, with one adding, “and I’m not even American.” That was it. The Obama Crying thing was, as far as I was concerned, a full-blown epidemic. One worth further study and explication. I did the only thing I knew how: I went to SurveyMonkey.com.

Survey Monkey lets you create free surveys and send them to people online. It’s easy. So I made a questionnaire: Did you cry on election night? If so, when was the last time you cried before that? And I asked respondents to specify their gender, age range and party affiliation.

Next, I took the hyperlink to my survey and posted it all over Facebook. Seeking parity, I posted it in a number of groups representing many distinct points along the ideological spectrum. I went from the famous group called “One Million Strong for Barack” to “1,000,000 Strong for McCain Palin” to “Reduce the Drinking Age to 18,” and to“weddings 2008.”

Another half-hour of this and Facebook decided I was a spammer and revoked all of my posting privileges, dealing a serious blow to my ability to disseminate the survey. So I turned to Twitter, where I “tweeted” a link to the survey to all 468 of the people who had, through the Web Scout blog, opted to follow my feed.

I popped open a bag of Fritos and let the results trickle in.

Some hours later, my survey had attracted 133 respondents. And are you ready for this? Fully 75% of them said they had cried or “sort of” cried on election night. (I’d included a box for people to say what “sort of” meant, and the consensus was that if you welled up but didn’t actually overflow, that’s “sort of” crying. Fair enough.)

More statistics: 33% of the criers/wellers were male. About half were between 15 and 25, a quarter 26 to 35, and another quarter were 36 to 45; 67% Democrats, 18% Republicans, 11% Independents. An impressive spread across all categories — perhaps this really was a phenomenon!

Among the written explanations were a few gems:

• “As the mother of a biracial child I have always been afraid that she would never be accepted by her peers. She wouldn’t be ‘white enough’ or ‘black enough.’ And seeing that an entire country can accept this biracial man as their leader, and also knowing how much the world as a whole supports him — gives me so much hope for my own daughter’s future.”
• “So proud that Americans elected a smart President! I also cried when I got a thank you text message from Barack Obama on my phone.”
• “I cried because I was so devastated that my country would choose someone who was going to destroy what America was founded on.”

I called Jack Glaser, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley who has written extensively on race, politics, emotion and the Internet. Quite possibly he could help me publish my findings in some obscure academic journal. When I asked him what he thought of my results, there was a pause. He then told me my methodology was completely flawed and my results scientifically meaningless.

I nearly cried.

“Whenever you have a survey where people voluntarily participate, you tend to overrepresent people who feel strongly one way or the other,“ Glaser said.

As a consolation prize, Glaser allowed that “it does look like there’s more expressed emotion after this election than there typically is. There’s a huge release on the partisan level,” he said, “And also a big exhilaration on the civil rights side. And the two sort of intertwine.”

So no science was had here today. Still, I count this as a victory, skewed and warped as it may be, for the social Web. It turns out that a few minutes on YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, plus a bit of survey monkeying, quickly revealed 100 people who had cried on election night. I don’t think you need science to see that there’s something happening there.

Special thanks to David A. Malbin

In the wake of the apparent passage of California Proposition 8, a second generation of rancorous debate has already sprung up online, with Facebook becoming a prominent virtual battleground.  Before the election, Facebook users created dozens of groups on both sides of the measure, some with tens of thousands of followers, others with just a handful.  (This anti-Prop. 8 group was even started by Facebook employees.)

Just as the memberships of those older groups continue to swell (see image at left), the new crop of groups is growing fast. 

Opponents are using Facebook to organize protests, boycotts and more creative kinds of political statements.

One group encourages readers to Protest Proposition 8 by paying with $2 Bills! If enough people pay with "The Queer Dollar," the group's description predicts, "$2 bills will flood the economy, and everyone will see how much LGBT and Allies's money contributes." 

Proponents of the marriage ban wasted no time in setting up new groups to defend the amendment's passage. 

"This group demands that the vote of the people be respected in our democracy," reads the description of 1,000,000 for Defending Prop 8, which has earned nearly 7,500 members since election day.  "Thousands of individuals fought for marriage, donated time and money, and sometimes were persecuted for it. We have come too far in this election to have it thrown out after the battle has been won."

Also employing the now-familiar "million for X" brand of Facebook activism is 1,000,000 Million Strong Against Newly Passed Prop. 8. (The group's creator sheepishly acknowledges the redundancy in the name), which already has nearly 60,000 members.  "Proposition 8 is not just about eliminating gay rights," the groups founder wrote in its intro box. "It's about DESTROYING the FOUNDATION [of] what our California Constitution stands for."

Get the Facts about the LDS Church and Proposition 8 notes that it "was set up to refute and dispel the countless untruths floating around regarding the Mormon church's involvement in Proposition 8," and Repeal the CA Ban on Marriage Equality - 2010 shares information about the legal challenges to the measure and the large protests that are now being organized (including a developing event activists are calling the Million Gay March).

It was blogs for everyone...

LisaNova's latest (and last?) Sarah Palin video brilliantly captures the instant irrelevance to which Alaska governor woke up on Wednesday morning. Cruel, cruel fate.  And I'm not talking about for her. We here in the elite media have been robbed of one of our most beloved darlings. This woman was like the Mrs. Claus of news --  where every day was Christmas and her heaping gift bag never ran out of articles, blogs, photos or video.  But now Christmas has ended a month early, and the nation is once again inundated with the humdrum secular talk of chiefs of staff and transitions to power. 

The Palin universe, presaging the fate of our own, has collapsed to an icy singularity. Vanished is the pulsing, nationwide fascination with her various ethics scandals, her husband's ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, $150,000 wardrobe, her family, her e-mail problems, her issues with guns and animals, and a dozen other micro issues made macro by mass attention. Among Palin's major cultural accomplishments is her single-handed reinvention of "Saturday Night Live," whose producers no doubt flouted their own political orientations to vote for Palin-McCain. The "SNL" skits -- as had "Lazy Sunday" before them -- blazed a trail in the evolving relationship between TV and online video -- where for the first time, more people watched the online version than the one that played on air.

But that was just one part of a much larger Palin-geist. It's hard to overestimate the part that Palin's glamorous mystique played in the hype that swirled around this election. To take just one measure:  a check of The Times article database reveals that over the last four years, Vice President-elect Joe Biden has appeared in 52 of the paper's headlines. Sarah Palin has been in 172, nearly three times as many as Biden -- and all of them since September. 

Google provides another rough measure of Palin's viral spread through the cultural consciousness.  Google results for Biden, who has been a U.S. senator for 30 years and is a two-time presidential candidate: 14,000,000. 

For Palin: 52,500,000.

And on YouTube, a search for Palin returns 167,000 results, nearly 100,000 more than Biden gets, and just about 50% of what McCain gets. Again, Palin made her national debut less than three months ago, while McCain and Biden -- in addition to having been in the presidential race for two years -- were on the national political scene long before YouTube and Google were invented, let alone the personal computer.

To put it plainly, Palin captured the nation's imagination, perhaps faster and more completely than any figure this century . But the election is over now, and the nation's imagination has moved forward, while Palin has gone back to Alaska.

Which is not to say we won't be hearing from her again, just that not nearly as many people will be listening.

It was a high-voltage day for the Internet. I only have stats for a few sites, but rest assured that records were broken all over the place. Personally, I can't remember more than a few minutes (when I went to vote, e.g.) when I didn't have my laptop open, the better to surf around furiously with.

Twitter obliterated its own usage records. According to Biz Stone, the site's co-founder, Twitter's peak messaging rate (measured in messages per second) was 2-3 times higher than the previous record rate, set during the first presidential debate.

"People turn to Twitter during shared, real-time events—these debates and this election was so massively shared that Twitter benefited from huge increases in both activity and exposure," Stone wrote in an e-mail.

Digg also reported its highest traffic day ever.  Leading the charge was the "Digg this if you voted for Obama" post, which scored a massive 33,000 diggs, making it the most-Dugg post in 365 days, and the second most-Dugg post ever. (The first is this famous one where site founder Kevin Rose addresses the leak of the HD-DVD key). Not surprisingly, Digg's politics section was the most popular area on the site.

At YouTube, the Video Your Vote project netted close to 1,500 videos from across the nation, many of them on Tuesday.  That blazing submission rate would seem to leave any of YouTube's previous community projects in the dust, according to this statement sent to me by a YouTube spokesperson:

"The CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate was open for submissions for two months and we received 3,000
questions. The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate was open for five months and we received 5,000 questions. Video Your Vote was open for submissions for a week and we received, in a period of one day, around 1,200 submissions."

The Los Angeles Times web site broke its all-time page view record with 8.36 million, beating a year-old record.

Twitter, the microblogging service that has become the best way to take the simultaneous instant temperature of thousands of online denizens, is exploding with a river of messages saluting Barack Obama as the next president.  Individual users are, of course, unconstrained by any professional worries about their credibility as pundits -- and so they're taking TV commentators at their word that the path to victory for McCain is all but nonexistant.  It's just that they're taking the next logical step.

"I'm ready to call it," tweeted ktfromLA, "Congrats President Obama!"

"Obama is going to take Ohio," wrote Lizzy Blackney.  "Brace yourselves, folks.  President-elect Obama is a reality."

"its over," said annafirsure.   "obama is going to be president. over."

Simply type in "president obama" to Twitter's search bar, and you will literally see the inrush of tweets using those words.  If Twitter is the wall, then there's a whole lot of writing on it

Katie Couric has just posted her final interview with candidate Sen. Barack Obama on YouTube, and it has  some good moments.  Obama tells Couric that his line about small towners becoming bitter and clinging to guns was a "stupid mistake on my part," and that it became "Exhibit A of Democrats saying something that made people feel like they were being insulted." (That's at 6:09 in the below clip.)

Couric also asks Obama about what it will mean to him personally if he gets elected. (8:26)

He describes a litany of people coming up to him on the campaign trail, telling him stories of hardship, including from older people of color. "But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race.  There is also this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, 'Boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it.' "

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Prop. 8 wars rage on Facebook

In the wake of the apparent passage of California Proposition 8, a second generation of rancorous debate has already sprung up online, with Facebook becoming a prominent virtual battleground.  Before the election, Facebook users created dozens of groups on both sides of the measure, some with tens of thousands of followers, others with just a handful.  (This anti-Prop. 8 group was even started by Facebook employees.)

Just as the memberships of those older groups continue to swell (see image at left), the new crop of groups is growing fast. 

Opponents are using Facebook to organize protests, boycotts and more creative kinds of political statements.

One group encourages readers to Protest Proposition 8 by paying with $2 Bills! If enough people pay with "The Queer Dollar," the group's description predicts, "$2 bills will flood the economy, and everyone will see how much LGBT and Allies's money contributes." 

Proponents of the marriage ban wasted no time in setting up new groups to defend the amendment's passage. 

"This group demands that the vote of the people be respected in our democracy," reads the description of 1,000,000 for Defending Prop 8, which has earned nearly 7,500 members since election day.  "Thousands of individuals fought for marriage, donated time and money, and sometimes were persecuted for it. We have come too far in this election to have it thrown out after the battle has been won."

Also employing the now-familiar "million for X" brand of Facebook activism is 1,000,000 Million Strong Against Newly Passed Prop. 8. (The group's creator sheepishly acknowledges the redundancy in the name), which already has nearly 60,000 members.  "Proposition 8 is not just about eliminating gay rights," the groups founder wrote in its intro box. "It's about DESTROYING the FOUNDATION [of] what our California Constitution stands for."

Get the Facts about the LDS Church and Proposition 8 notes that it "was set up to refute and dispel the countless untruths floating around regarding the Mormon church's involvement in Proposition 8," and Repeal the CA Ban on Marriage Equality - 2010 shares information about the legal challenges to the measure and the large protests that are now being organized (including a developing event activists are calling the Million Gay March).

It was blogs for everyone...

LisaNova's latest (and last?) Sarah Palin video brilliantly captures the instant irrelevance to which Alaska governor woke up on Wednesday morning. Cruel, cruel fate.  And I'm not talking about for her. We here in the elite media have been robbed of one of our most beloved darlings. This woman was like the Mrs. Claus of news --  where every day was Christmas and her heaping gift bag never ran out of articles, blogs, photos or video.  But now Christmas has ended a month early, and the nation is once again inundated with the humdrum secular talk of chiefs of staff and transitions to power. 

The Palin universe, presaging the fate of our own, has collapsed to an icy singularity. Vanished is the pulsing, nationwide fascination with her various ethics scandals, her husband's ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, $150,000 wardrobe, her family, her e-mail problems, her issues with guns and animals, and a dozen other micro issues made macro by mass attention. Among Palin's major cultural accomplishments is her single-handed reinvention of "Saturday Night Live," whose producers no doubt flouted their own political orientations to vote for Palin-McCain. The "SNL" skits -- as had "Lazy Sunday" before them -- blazed a trail in the evolving relationship between TV and online video -- where for the first time, more people watched the online version than the one that played on air.

But that was just one part of a much larger Palin-geist. It's hard to overestimate the part that Palin's glamorous mystique played in the hype that swirled around this election. To take just one measure:  a check of The Times article database reveals that over the last four years, Vice President-elect Joe Biden has appeared in 52 of the paper's headlines. Sarah Palin has been in 172, nearly three times as many as Biden -- and all of them since September. 

Google provides another rough measure of Palin's viral spread through the cultural consciousness.  Google results for Biden, who has been a U.S. senator for 30 years and is a two-time presidential candidate: 14,000,000. 

For Palin: 52,500,000.

And on YouTube, a search for Palin returns 167,000 results, nearly 100,000 more than Biden gets, and just about 50% of what McCain gets. Again, Palin made her national debut less than three months ago, while McCain and Biden -- in addition to having been in the presidential race for two years -- were on the national political scene long before YouTube and Google were invented, let alone the personal computer.

To put it plainly, Palin captured the nation's imagination, perhaps faster and more completely than any figure this century . But the election is over now, and the nation's imagination has moved forward, while Palin has gone back to Alaska.

Which is not to say we won't be hearing from her again, just that not nearly as many people will be listening.

It was a high-voltage day for the Internet. I only have stats for a few sites, but rest assured that records were broken all over the place. Personally, I can't remember more than a few minutes (when I went to vote, e.g.) when I didn't have my laptop open, the better to surf around furiously with.

Twitter obliterated its own usage records. According to Biz Stone, the site's co-founder, Twitter's peak messaging rate (measured in messages per second) was 2-3 times higher than the previous record rate, set during the first presidential debate.

"People turn to Twitter during shared, real-time events—these debates and this election was so massively shared that Twitter benefited from huge increases in both activity and exposure," Stone wrote in an e-mail.

Digg also reported its highest traffic day ever.  Leading the charge was the "Digg this if you voted for Obama" post, which scored a massive 33,000 diggs, making it the most-Dugg post in 365 days, and the second most-Dugg post ever. (The first is this famous one where site founder Kevin Rose addresses the leak of the HD-DVD key). Not surprisingly, Digg's politics section was the most popular area on the site.

At YouTube, the Video Your Vote project netted close to 1,500 videos from across the nation, many of them on Tuesday.  That blazing submission rate would seem to leave any of YouTube's previous community projects in the dust, according to this statement sent to me by a YouTube spokesperson:

"The CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate was open for submissions for two months and we received 3,000
questions. The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate was open for five months and we received 5,000 questions. Video Your Vote was open for submissions for a week and we received, in a period of one day, around 1,200 submissions."

The Los Angeles Times web site broke its all-time page view record with 8.36 million, beating a year-old record.

Twitter, the microblogging service that has become the best way to take the simultaneous instant temperature of thousands of online denizens, is exploding with a river of messages saluting Barack Obama as the next president.  Individual users are, of course, unconstrained by any professional worries about their credibility as pundits -- and so they're taking TV commentators at their word that the path to victory for McCain is all but nonexistant.  It's just that they're taking the next logical step.

"I'm ready to call it," tweeted ktfromLA, "Congrats President Obama!"

"Obama is going to take Ohio," wrote Lizzy Blackney.  "Brace yourselves, folks.  President-elect Obama is a reality."

"its over," said annafirsure.   "obama is going to be president. over."

Simply type in "president obama" to Twitter's search bar, and you will literally see the inrush of tweets using those words.  If Twitter is the wall, then there's a whole lot of writing on it

Katie Couric has just posted her final interview with candidate Sen. Barack Obama on YouTube, and it has  some good moments.  Obama tells Couric that his line about small towners becoming bitter and clinging to guns was a "stupid mistake on my part," and that it became "Exhibit A of Democrats saying something that made people feel like they were being insulted." (That's at 6:09 in the below clip.)

Couric also asks Obama about what it will mean to him personally if he gets elected. (8:26)

He describes a litany of people coming up to him on the campaign trail, telling him stories of hardship, including from older people of color. "But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race.  There is also this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, 'Boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it.' "

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Palin and the Web: Christmas is over

It was blogs for everyone...

LisaNova's latest (and last?) Sarah Palin video brilliantly captures the instant irrelevance to which Alaska governor woke up on Wednesday morning. Cruel, cruel fate.  And I'm not talking about for her. We here in the elite media have been robbed of one of our most beloved darlings. This woman was like the Mrs. Claus of news --  where every day was Christmas and her heaping gift bag never ran out of articles, blogs, photos or video.  But now Christmas has ended a month early, and the nation is once again inundated with the humdrum secular talk of chiefs of staff and transitions to power. 

The Palin universe, presaging the fate of our own, has collapsed to an icy singularity. Vanished is the pulsing, nationwide fascination with her various ethics scandals, her husband's ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, $150,000 wardrobe, her family, her e-mail problems, her issues with guns and animals, and a dozen other micro issues made macro by mass attention. Among Palin's major cultural accomplishments is her single-handed reinvention of "Saturday Night Live," whose producers no doubt flouted their own political orientations to vote for Palin-McCain. The "SNL" skits -- as had "Lazy Sunday" before them -- blazed a trail in the evolving relationship between TV and online video -- where for the first time, more people watched the online version than the one that played on air.

But that was just one part of a much larger Palin-geist. It's hard to overestimate the part that Palin's glamorous mystique played in the hype that swirled around this election. To take just one measure:  a check of The Times article database reveals that over the last four years, Vice President-elect Joe Biden has appeared in 52 of the paper's headlines. Sarah Palin has been in 172, nearly three times as many as Biden -- and all of them since September. 

Google provides another rough measure of Palin's viral spread through the cultural consciousness.  Google results for Biden, who has been a U.S. senator for 30 years and is a two-time presidential candidate: 14,000,000. 

For Palin: 52,500,000.

And on YouTube, a search for Palin returns 167,000 results, nearly 100,000 more than Biden gets, and just about 50% of what McCain gets. Again, Palin made her national debut less than three months ago, while McCain and Biden -- in addition to having been in the presidential race for two years -- were on the national political scene long before YouTube and Google were invented, let alone the personal computer.

To put it plainly, Palin captured the nation's imagination, perhaps faster and more completely than any figure this century . But the election is over now, and the nation's imagination has moved forward, while Palin has gone back to Alaska.

Which is not to say we won't be hearing from her again, just that not nearly as many people will be listening.

It was a high-voltage day for the Internet. I only have stats for a few sites, but rest assured that records were broken all over the place. Personally, I can't remember more than a few minutes (when I went to vote, e.g.) when I didn't have my laptop open, the better to surf around furiously with.

Twitter obliterated its own usage records. According to Biz Stone, the site's co-founder, Twitter's peak messaging rate (measured in messages per second) was 2-3 times higher than the previous record rate, set during the first presidential debate.

"People turn to Twitter during shared, real-time events—these debates and this election was so massively shared that Twitter benefited from huge increases in both activity and exposure," Stone wrote in an e-mail.

Digg also reported its highest traffic day ever.  Leading the charge was the "Digg this if you voted for Obama" post, which scored a massive 33,000 diggs, making it the most-Dugg post in 365 days, and the second most-Dugg post ever. (The first is this famous one where site founder Kevin Rose addresses the leak of the HD-DVD key). Not surprisingly, Digg's politics section was the most popular area on the site.

At YouTube, the Video Your Vote project netted close to 1,500 videos from across the nation, many of them on Tuesday.  That blazing submission rate would seem to leave any of YouTube's previous community projects in the dust, according to this statement sent to me by a YouTube spokesperson:

"The CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate was open for submissions for two months and we received 3,000
questions. The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate was open for five months and we received 5,000 questions. Video Your Vote was open for submissions for a week and we received, in a period of one day, around 1,200 submissions."

The Los Angeles Times web site broke its all-time page view record with 8.36 million, beating a year-old record.

Twitter, the microblogging service that has become the best way to take the simultaneous instant temperature of thousands of online denizens, is exploding with a river of messages saluting Barack Obama as the next president.  Individual users are, of course, unconstrained by any professional worries about their credibility as pundits -- and so they're taking TV commentators at their word that the path to victory for McCain is all but nonexistant.  It's just that they're taking the next logical step.

"I'm ready to call it," tweeted ktfromLA, "Congrats President Obama!"

"Obama is going to take Ohio," wrote Lizzy Blackney.  "Brace yourselves, folks.  President-elect Obama is a reality."

"its over," said annafirsure.   "obama is going to be president. over."

Simply type in "president obama" to Twitter's search bar, and you will literally see the inrush of tweets using those words.  If Twitter is the wall, then there's a whole lot of writing on it

Katie Couric has just posted her final interview with candidate Sen. Barack Obama on YouTube, and it has  some good moments.  Obama tells Couric that his line about small towners becoming bitter and clinging to guns was a "stupid mistake on my part," and that it became "Exhibit A of Democrats saying something that made people feel like they were being insulted." (That's at 6:09 in the below clip.)

Couric also asks Obama about what it will mean to him personally if he gets elected. (8:26)

He describes a litany of people coming up to him on the campaign trail, telling him stories of hardship, including from older people of color. "But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race.  There is also this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, 'Boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it.' "

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Twitter, Digg, YouTube, Times smash records on election day

It was a high-voltage day for the Internet. I only have stats for a few sites, but rest assured that records were broken all over the place. Personally, I can't remember more than a few minutes (when I went to vote, e.g.) when I didn't have my laptop open, the better to surf around furiously with.

Twitter obliterated its own usage records. According to Biz Stone, the site's co-founder, Twitter's peak messaging rate (measured in messages per second) was 2-3 times higher than the previous record rate, set during the first presidential debate.

"People turn to Twitter during shared, real-time events—these debates and this election was so massively shared that Twitter benefited from huge increases in both activity and exposure," Stone wrote in an e-mail.

Digg also reported its highest traffic day ever.  Leading the charge was the "Digg this if you voted for Obama" post, which scored a massive 33,000 diggs, making it the most-Dugg post in 365 days, and the second most-Dugg post ever. (The first is this famous one where site founder Kevin Rose addresses the leak of the HD-DVD key). Not surprisingly, Digg's politics section was the most popular area on the site.

At YouTube, the Video Your Vote project netted close to 1,500 videos from across the nation, many of them on Tuesday.  That blazing submission rate would seem to leave any of YouTube's previous community projects in the dust, according to this statement sent to me by a YouTube spokesperson:

"The CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate was open for submissions for two months and we received 3,000
questions. The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate was open for five months and we received 5,000 questions. Video Your Vote was open for submissions for a week and we received, in a period of one day, around 1,200 submissions."

The Los Angeles Times web site broke its all-time page view record with 8.36 million, beating a year-old record.

Twitter, the microblogging service that has become the best way to take the simultaneous instant temperature of thousands of online denizens, is exploding with a river of messages saluting Barack Obama as the next president.  Individual users are, of course, unconstrained by any professional worries about their credibility as pundits -- and so they're taking TV commentators at their word that the path to victory for McCain is all but nonexistant.  It's just that they're taking the next logical step.

"I'm ready to call it," tweeted ktfromLA, "Congrats President Obama!"

"Obama is going to take Ohio," wrote Lizzy Blackney.  "Brace yourselves, folks.  President-elect Obama is a reality."

"its over," said annafirsure.   "obama is going to be president. over."

Simply type in "president obama" to Twitter's search bar, and you will literally see the inrush of tweets using those words.  If Twitter is the wall, then there's a whole lot of writing on it

Katie Couric has just posted her final interview with candidate Sen. Barack Obama on YouTube, and it has  some good moments.  Obama tells Couric that his line about small towners becoming bitter and clinging to guns was a "stupid mistake on my part," and that it became "Exhibit A of Democrats saying something that made people feel like they were being insulted." (That's at 6:09 in the below clip.)

Couric also asks Obama about what it will mean to him personally if he gets elected. (8:26)

He describes a litany of people coming up to him on the campaign trail, telling him stories of hardship, including from older people of color. "But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race.  There is also this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, 'Boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it.' "

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Twitter explodes as users hail 'president obama'

Twitter, the microblogging service that has become the best way to take the simultaneous instant temperature of thousands of online denizens, is exploding with a river of messages saluting Barack Obama as the next president.  Individual users are, of course, unconstrained by any professional worries about their credibility as pundits -- and so they're taking TV commentators at their word that the path to victory for McCain is all but nonexistant.  It's just that they're taking the next logical step.

"I'm ready to call it," tweeted ktfromLA, "Congrats President Obama!"

"Obama is going to take Ohio," wrote Lizzy Blackney.  "Brace yourselves, folks.  President-elect Obama is a reality."

"its over," said annafirsure.   "obama is going to be president. over."

Simply type in "president obama" to Twitter's search bar, and you will literally see the inrush of tweets using those words.  If Twitter is the wall, then there's a whole lot of writing on it

Katie Couric has just posted her final interview with candidate Sen. Barack Obama on YouTube, and it has  some good moments.  Obama tells Couric that his line about small towners becoming bitter and clinging to guns was a "stupid mistake on my part," and that it became "Exhibit A of Democrats saying something that made people feel like they were being insulted." (That's at 6:09 in the below clip.)

Couric also asks Obama about what it will mean to him personally if he gets elected. (8:26)

He describes a litany of people coming up to him on the campaign trail, telling him stories of hardship, including from older people of color. "But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race.  There is also this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, 'Boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it.' "

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Obama tells Couric about his 'stupid mistake,' and what a win would mean

Katie Couric has just posted her final interview with candidate Sen. Barack Obama on YouTube, and it has  some good moments.  Obama tells Couric that his line about small towners becoming bitter and clinging to guns was a "stupid mistake on my part," and that it became "Exhibit A of Democrats saying something that made people feel like they were being insulted." (That's at 6:09 in the below clip.)

Couric also asks Obama about what it will mean to him personally if he gets elected. (8:26)

He describes a litany of people coming up to him on the campaign trail, telling him stories of hardship, including from older people of color. "But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race.  There is also this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, 'Boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it.' "

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Google users want to see exit-poll data -- now

Google's Hot Trends list, the page that shows the most intensely searched Google terms of the moment, is chock-full of people who want to know the results of the election -- immediately!  Eight of top 10 search terms, as of 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, were variants of "exit polls 2008," with one subsection of the searching populace just cutting to the chase and typing in "who's winning the election?" 

Most of those users are going to be disappointed for a while longer, however.  Not only will exit-polling data not be released for several more hours, but even when it is, experts are cautioning everyone to take the results with a grain of salt this time around.

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Facebook users at least saying they're voting

All morning the Facebook vote counter has been climbing steadily, and it is now about to pass 2,750,000.  There's no way to confirm that everyone who clicked "I voted" actually did, but barring mass Facebook I-voted fraud, this is a pretty neat way for the social network to highlight the effect it's had on the election.

 

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Obama flipped the bird? Then so did Rumsfeld, the Dog Whisperer, and a baby

You may have seen today's bombshell video of Sen. Barack Obama extending his middle finger and scratching his face as he congratulated opponent John McCain on reaching the end of his campaign. The video was all over YouTube and the Drudge Report, which in turn linked back to this April post from our own well-loved political blog Top of the Ticket -- the older video shows Obama making a similar gesture as he spoke about then-opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But with all these birds taking flight, and the partisan screaming that follows, I felt I needed to step forward on this issue. As a person who was once wrongly accused of flipping someone the bird, I can no longer stand for these baseless accusations, and the unnecessary heartache that goes along with them. As I told my 6th grade P.E. teacher: sometimes you just need to scratch your eye, and the pointer finger won't do. (Maybe you know your pointer is dirty, or maybe you picked up a jalapeno with it earlier, maybe you don't have one). So you use the middle. It is a finger, after all, and there's no law saying you can't use it to scratch whatever part of your face you need to. 

There's a long tradition of middle-finger activity by many great citizens of all ages and nationalities. Below you will see innocent birds by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Millan, beach volleyball star and Olympic gold medalist Todd Rogers, a woman on a British TV show, Tom Petty and a baby. 

Granted, Obama threw up the birdy twice, both times while talking about his opponents, and that's a tic he should hire someone to help him with. But seriously. Please. It's Nov. 3. If this is what our political commentators are dishing up on the eve of the biggest election in a generation, this democracy has a little bit of growing up to do.

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

California ballot propositions living loud on YouTube

From Jerod Gunsberg's homemade Prop 6 ad.

We already know this is the year of the first “YouTube election,” where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie’s cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you’re like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements — the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn’t have to waste time figuring it out.

But all is not lost. Paid political ads, it turns out, have joined the swelling ranks of their unpaid video brethren and found a new home online. Only, just like everything else on YouTube, the word “paid” no longer really applies. None of the hundreds of Web-only ads for California’s 12 ballot propositions cost a cent to upload, enabling proponents and opponents across the state a low-cost way to spread their message to a potentially vast audience.

“Potentially” being the key word. Unlike paying for a slice of prime TV airtime, when millions of captive viewers will see your message, every video uploaded to the Web starts off with zero viewers — and a whole lot of them end there too. Weighing against the freeness of online distribution, then, is the serious problem of getting anyone to notice your new video among the 10 thousand that were uploaded the very same second.

Still, the haystack problem hasn’t dissuaded California activists from generating a wave of political ads, many of which are home brewed — a kind of creative alternative to the standard campaign contribution. Jerod Gunsberg, 36, of the South Bay, decided to use his home computer to make an ad against Proposition 6 — the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which allocates about 1% of the state’s budget to anti-crime programs. “It seemed like a lot more fun to make a campaign video about ballot propositions than to write blog posts about them,” said Gunsberg, who blogs frequently about state issues but is not associated with the No on 6 campaign.

Gunsberg’s snappy, tongue-in-cheek spot warns voters not to fall for the measure’s claim that it will decrease crime. “Prop. 6 will make your neighborhood more dangerous and lead California to financial ruin!” the voice-over warns. A moment later, an image of Disneyland’s main marquee pops up: “Closed forever,” it reads. “Everyone is broke.”

The video ad has netted only 275 views since it was posted on Monday, but Gunsberg is OK with that. “It’s not like one video on these things breaks through,” he said. “There’s a bunch of campaign videos out there, especially on the ballot props. If they all generate a few hundred views each, maybe it aggregates into this building awareness.”

Modest awareness building is probably the best-case scenario this time around, given that the state has more than 16 million registered voters, and even the most successful Web video ads are still hovering around 100,000 views — a little more than one-half of 1% of the electorate, assuming (wrongly) that the ads have had no repeat viewers.

Even Proposition 8, the highly visible measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, has had trouble attracting the kind of viewing stats that go along with so-called viral success. The No on 8 campaign’s video of Ellen DeGeneres asking viewers to reject the measure has become one of the most-watched online ads of any ballot prop campaign, scoring 103,000 views in two weeks.

For comparison, a 40-second video showing a bolt of lightning striking behind Sen. Barack Obama as he gave a speech Tuesday had 250,000 views by Wednesday morning.

But Chris Maliwat, the head of the No on Prop 8 Web effort, noted that the campaign’s 40 online videos, including a number from sources independent of the campaign, have millions of views in aggregate. And that the true power of a YouTube campaign is that the issue can be approached from many angles, rather than just the lowest common denominator that expensive mass media ads require.

“With a normal campaign, within a month or two, you might have six or 12 total spots that run about 30 seconds and play the same kind of dreary music,” Maliwat said. “But when you’ve got a wide variety of voices showing their points of view, the authenticity of it resonates with people in different ways.” No on 8 covers the rhetorical bases by variously featuring celebrities, politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, comedians and even real people. (Notably absent, as Jonathan Rauch noted in a Times editorial this week, are gays themselves.)

Several of the Yes on 8 campaign’s videos have scored well too, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined a request to discuss its Web approach.

More than one of the proposition campaigns have sought to engage users by encouraging them to create ads. Both sides of Proposition 4 have held contests to find the best user-generated ads. (Proposition 4 would require physicians to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion.)

“Video storytelling at its heart is about drama,” said Miriam Gerace, a spokeswoman for the No on 4 campaign. “And one of the more difficult and truly life-altering decisions that a woman of any age can make has to do with what she’s going to do with an unplanned pregnancy.”

The campaign received 24 submissions to its contest.

Spokesman Albin Rohmberg of Yes on 4 said his campaign actually ended up taking several of the videos it had received “over the transom” and paying to broadcast them in television markets around California. Those videos also focus on narrative strains that the campaign has formulated, like one 10,000-view video’s premise that without the notification law, child predators are more likely to impregnate young girls without consequence.

That a user-generated clip with an audience that small could hurtle its way up the media pyramid in and onto the airwaves is a nice encapsulation of this inchoate area of online activism. It shows that it’s possible for a very small number of passionate citizens to affect the political process more than we would have dreamed of, even in 2004. But it’s also a reminder that the Web is far from the panacea for democracy that many of its boosters have predicted. Democracy is a numbers game, and when it comes to a giant state like California, a few thousand people is not representative.

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

What $75,062 will buy you at Neiman Marcus

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we're now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash.  We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus' website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

Here's a screenshot of Maria's shopping cart, which contains 63 items.

Here's a screenshot of David's shopping cart, which contains 212 items.

Hers

We decided to see what that kind of cash could buy for Sarah Palin herself, sticking to the Republican vice presidential nominee's own sassy-conservative style. And, of couse, we stuck to American designers. Also, we steered away from prints, which seem to have become Michelle Obama's signature. Palin favors sober (but occasionally texture-y) solids.

In the pricey "Fine Apparel" category, it turns out Neiman Marcus is big on Euro designers like Armani and Escada, and they're full up on drapey, filmy and asymmetric dresses, so it was tough finding sober campaign-ready suits. (Thank heavens for their deep St. John inventory.) After scrolling through many screens of enticing but un-vice-presidential options, we found 13 appropriate jackets and 10 skirt-and-shirt combos or dresses to go under them, enough for two weeks of campaigning between trips to the cleaners.

Footwear-wise, we jettisoned the America-first principle, since she probably won't get asked whose shoes she's wearing. We got her four pairs of Manolos, a pair of Prada boots, winter white Marc Jacobs boots, and a big fuzzy Australian apres-ski-style pair.

At this point fatigue set in. We began to suspect that spending $75,000 at Neiman Marcus would mean shopping for more people than just one suit-wearing woman. Still, if we were going to jack up our total by buying things Palin could wear during the campaign, we decided to go with accessories -- a shortcut, essentially, with a few $8,000 necklaces and 10 pairs of $3,100 earrings. (Also, couldn't resist a $995 diamond Hello Kitty watch for Piper.)

His

Boy oh boy. Oh boy. You really have to WORK to spend that kind of cash -- especially if you're a guy. David walked away with the 11 most expensive Armani and Dolce & Gabana suits in the store,  7 pairs of Prada shoes, 4 primo leather jackets, 7 pairs of Seven jeans, 35 pairs of designer sunglasses, 100 gorgeous ties, plus a bunch of shirts, underwear, watches, rings, bracelets, two iPod speaker docks and something called a Hercules Fleur-de-Lis Dog Tag ($920). In an attempt to get the editors to actually pay for this motherlode, David insisted this would be about 10 years worth of clothes for him, and that he would work for free until St. Patrick's day.  No one was swayed.

(David wasn't trying for much verisimilitude.  Mostly he just wanted to go Brewster's Millions on this whole thing.) 

*virtual dollars

-- Maria Russo & David Sarno

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Prescient "Batman" episode nails the Obama-McCain race

Thanks to YouTube, the below video of Batman's televised mayoral debate with the Penguin, from the "Dizzoner the Penguin" episode of Adam West's 1966  "Batman," is gaining new currency.

The clip, first uploaded in early 2007, has been picked up by several political commentators and compared to recent debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

Besides being an amusing clip on its own -- the great Burgess Meredith turns in a virtuoso performance as  the Bilious Bird -- viewers have noted some chuckle-worthy parallels between this fictional debate and the real thing. 

In last week's face-off, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates about the smears and personal attacks that have become a significant part of the discourse as the campaign winds up. 

"I think the tone of this campaign could've been very different," said McCain at the time. "And the fact is it's gotten pretty tough, and I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns."

Likewise, the Penguin starts out humbly enough: "Friends and fellow citizens, I want to give you my solemn word that there will be no mudslinging in this campaign. ... I intend to stick to the issues." 

But with that disclaimer out of the way, the Penguin wastes no time in getting to his point. "Now what are the issues? There's only one issue: Batman!"

"I suggest that behind that mask, Batman is, in reality, a dangerous criminal. Why else does he wear a mask? Why else does he conceal his past? Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!"

McCain makes a similar pivot, this time to the controversial subjects of Obama's association with former radical Bill Ayers, a founder of Weather Underground who McCain called a "washed up terrorist."

"Senator Obama chose to associate with a guy who in 2001 said he wished he'd bombed more." McCain then draws links between Obama and the community organization ACORN, which, he says, is "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

It's probably a comment on the predictability of this presidential campaign that it was anticipated by a 40-year-old TV show populated by wacky caricatures. Same hack script, same hack channel.

Unfortunately, Penguin's brilliant plan hits a snag. Afraid that his lead in the polls is shrinking, he kidnaps the Board of Elections so the vote cannot be certified. This scheme backfires, and Batman turns up to rescue the hostages ("Pengy, you said we associated with criminals.  So ... here we are." BOOM! POW! WHAMM!). 

Batman is elected but resigns to allow the current mayor to keep his position. But not before one of the major parties calls to offer him the presidential candidacy for 1968 -- exactly 40 Novembers ago. 

Exclaims Robin: "Bulging ballot boxes, Batman, that was some offer!"   

-- David Sarno

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

MoveOn.org's fuzzy McCain-Palin Facebook ads

Facebook users will have repeatedly seen a series of small advertisements that point to media outlets catching Sarah Palin or John McCain in a lie.  At least, that's what the ads say.

"Jake Tapper: Palin lied," says one ad that points to a column by the ABC correspondent.  "AP: Palin lied again," says a second.  A third continues on the theme:  "NBC: Palin lies lies lies."  One even got YouTube in on the action:  "YouTube says: McCain lied," it read.  "Amazing."

The thumbnail-size advertisements carry no indication of who paid for them. And because the ads so closely resemble the paid web ads news organizations often buy to boost to their own stories (a practice we noted here), it would take an act of sustained curiosity to tell that these were political advertisements at all. 

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal got curious, and eventually asked the liberal action group MoveOn.org if it was behind the campaign. It was. 

But unless you happen to have caught the Journal's blog post that day, you'd still have no way to tell the ads come from a partisan advocacy group. The spots continue to circulate today, sans disclaimer. It appears that the possibility of voter confusion is not keeping MoveOn up at night.

Indeed, rather than attempt to eliminate the issue, the group has invoked a strange campaign law loophole that it says makes their ads "totally legal" by exempting the following class of items from the need to include a disclaimer:

(i) Bumper stickers, pins, buttons, pens, and similar small items upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed;

Let's ignore that this provision is clearly aimed at physical objects upon which only a couple of words can readably fit. The main question, then, is whether or not it's "convenient" for MoveOn to include a disclaimer in this case, given that Facebook ads can only accommodate 140 characters. 

Which, no, is not very many -- perhaps enough for a few sentences. But adding the 20-character phrase "Paid for by MoveOn," would only reduce the amount of space for the main message by 15%.  Meaning the only inconvenience would be suffered by the intern writing the ad copy -- suddenly she'd have only 120 characters to say what she'd just said in 140. Welcome to the big time, kid.

Adding to MoveOn's somewhat incongruous position are several other ads it has purchased on Facebook. In these others, which generally are selling T-shirts, stickers, and other campaign goodies, the name MoveOn is prominently included, lest a user mistakenly send their T-shirt money to the wrong Obama merchandiser. (Amusingly, the stickers themselves contain MoveOn's name in small print too.)

It would be one thing if MoveOn was using the political ads to point to its own content. Then the identification would be implicit. But in the case of the "lie" ads, they're linking directly to third-party news stories, giving no hint that there's an invisible middleman -- and one with an unsubtle agenda. 

That agenda includes a relatively low standard for labeling something a "lie" -- a word news organizations are careful about throwing around, not least in headlines. Read Jake Tapper's piece and you might wonder if Tapper would say he'd called Palin a liar, or if instead he'd say that he was pointing out some of the candidate's inconsistencies on global warming. Point being, try to put that particular word in any reporter's mouth and you're likely to get a finger bitten off. 

In its excitement to cry liar, MoveOn has been a bit uncareful as well. The ad headlined "YouTube says: McCain lied" linked to this Politico post, where Ben Smith reported that YouTube removed a McCain political ad because it made unauthorized use of footage from CBS.  Smith's post -- which, again, was the page to which the MoveOn ad linked, clearly states that YouTube removed the footage "on the request of CBS," not of its own accord.  (The headline of Smith's post is "CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading.'") MoveOn removed that ad from Facebook after I asked about it.

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Kid in Palin hack fuss gets a digital hit-and-run

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Blogosphere lynches 'Palin hacker,' minus evidence

A fact-light report from WREG-TV in Memphis. (Image via YouTube.com)

Can someone please arrest the blogosphere and put them all away? Don't worry about gathering evidence or building a case, just lock them up and throw away the key — they'd do the same to you.

Drunk on the prospect that the 20-year-old son of a Democratic legislator in Tennessee was behind Wednesday's Palin e-mail hack, many blogs, political and otherwise, have summarily convicted the young man based on an impressive array of rumors, recycled nonfacts, misinterpretations and outright negligence. Then some TV stations and newspapers picked up the canard, running stories whose factual underpinning was that the hacking accusation was "the topic of heated discussions by bloggers all day." 

The whole circus started with the resemblance between a pseudonym of someone who claimed to be the hacker, and the supposed e-mail address of the politician's son. Both contained the word "rubico."  For many reporters, that might prompt a few phone calls. For bloggers, it was enough to light the torches.

Leading the misinfo-pack is conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who began a post on the subject by quoting Nashville's Tennessean newspaper's report that, among other things, that "the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking." 

But — and this bears strenuous emphasis — the Tennessean has completely changed its tune. Without a note or correction, it soon replaced the version that Malkin quotes with one in which Rep. Kernell merely acknowledges that his son "is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking." 

Malkin doesn't mention the change, and the original, incorrect version has been cited more widely than the less exciting up-to-date version.

Malkin does, however, link to Gateway Pundit, a blog whose modus operandus is apparently to trumpet falsehoods with multiple exclamation points so other blogs can at least have a source when they want to spread rumors. Here's the headline of the Gateway post Malkin links to (the ellipses are part of the headline): "FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!! ...Update: Name- [first name deleted by Web Scout] Kernell ...Update: He's Been Contacted by Feds!" Then later: "Kernell Confesses?"

What? Every one of these statements is dead wrong. There's been no admission of guilt nor official  suspect named by any agency.  No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities. (Rep. Kernell has said explicitly, including in the WREG-TV video that Gateway itself posted, that neither he nor his son has been contacted at all.) So seriously...huh?   

But here's where the snake really begins to eat its tail. To back up its suggestion that Kernell confessed, Gateway links to an article on a British tech site called PC Pro, which claimed that "a message was posted by Kernell on the 4chan forum claiming that he was behind the attack."

But the message that PC Pro was referring to, widely disseminated by Malkin, apparently came from the image board 4chan.org. I say apparently because 4chan's posts are not archived, and often disappear without a trace in a matter of minutes, making it difficult to prove anything originated there. Moreover, the confession that Malkin posted carried only the ID "rubico" — it did not contain the younger Kernell's name anywhere — and was itself sent to Malkin by an unnamed source. 

So, to recap:  A pseudonymous message on a nonarchived discussion board famous for mischief and anonymity was rescued by another anonymous user (Malkin's), and Malkin unquestioningly posted it on her blog.  From there, the account was passed around until it was picked up by a British computing site that mistakenly attached Kernell's name to it — based on an e-mail address someone found by Googling the pseudonymous rubico.

Then, with the fiction gaining steam (but no fact), Gateway Pundit and others were free to run with it until — surprise! — their posts were linked by Malkin, who helped create the story in the first place. Ain't it pretty?

The blogoshere has assembled numerous details and speculation about what's going on, but it's my contention that there's not one verifiable truth in this story. The clue that started it all — the tale of two rubicos — is certainly worth a raised eyebrow, but it's a far cry from enough evidence to conduct a virtual lynching.

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

4Chan's half-hack of Palin's email goes awry

Chatter on 4chan.org's /b/ board.

In perhaps the most astonishing development yet for the culture of online troublemakers, 4chan.org's /b/ board (see a few of their past exploits here and here ) apparently managed this morning to take over the e-mail account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  The generally apolitical 4chan pranksters, who have now been widely profiled in the media, are known less for their social activism than for their propensity for pulling online stunts designed to evoke maximum anger, shock and disgust. 

But now the anonymous participants on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board--the home base of their community and launching pad for their pranks--seem to feel they blew a chance to do some real damage.

According to accounts so far, and chatter on /b/ itself, shortly after the password information to Palin's account was posted on the board, the account became inaccessible, either because too many people tried to access it at once, or because a dissenter from within /b/ changed the password.

Either way, the amount of information retrieved from the Palin account appears to be relatively small.  A screen shot of Palin's account shows it contained 84 unread e-mails and possibly hundreds more, but only two have made their way online, suggesting the rest were not saved before the account was locked. If they were, wouldn't we have seen them online by now? 

"/b/ is now 'epic fail /b/' for not finding anything good in Palin's e-mail," wrote one anonymous commenter on the site, slamming the board with /b/'s highest-order insult.  "Seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically."

"I agree," said another.  "This is epic fail. How can there not be something good in those messages?"

One of the bits of data that appears to have been taken from the account is a text-only list of all the e-mails contained in its Inbox, including the subjects and names of the senders.  The list, linked here, looks authentic and matches with the data in the screenshots of the account. (Note: this link was having trouble Wednesday night because of interest in this story.)

The list contains several interesting-looking entries, including several from Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich labeled "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter" and "RE: Request for Information and Documents," one by Palin aide Ivy Frye titled "veep talking pts" and a variety of others relating to judicial nominations, policy points and personnel and budget issues in the Alaska government.

Illegal invasion of privacy and e-mail hijacking will never be an acceptable way to express your political views, or your nihilistic lack thereof, or whatever was motivating the /b/ participants. So there's probably some poetic justice in the ending of this episode: This frenzied crew, having decided to break the law in order to gain access to a possible political motherlode managed--amazingly--to do little more than lock themselves out of it without having found much at all. 

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

McCain Blue Screen contest: Mac vs. McCain

Barely Political has jumped on the McCain blue screen bandwagon with this parody of the ubiquitous Apple-PC commercials.  These jokesters have inserted a white background behind McCain to mimic the Apple spots, and mashed up McCain's acceptance speech so he sounds sort of like the personification of his own kind of computer ("I don't work!"). The video feels a little scattered overall -- like there weren't enough relevant sound bites to yoke together to fit the premise, but the idea of McCain as a talking Macintosh competitor is just weird enough to carry the thing off by itself.

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

'Battlestar Galatica's' Adama: change we can suspend disbelief in

Adama comes with an impressive resume, but who will be his VP? (Image courtesy Adamaforpresident.org)

Given that the presidential campaign seems to be moving away from reality and toward the fictional realm (thanks Slate), it makes sense that a new, more appealing and powerful candidate is bursting onto the scene. 

That's Adm. William "Bill" Adama, commander of the human star fleet, whose exploits have been faithfully chronicled in the excellent space documentary Battlestar Galactica.

Adama's campaign is headquartered at adamaforpresident.org, which sports the banner reproduced above. This is a man who ought to have a reasonable chance running as a third-party candidate. He's got extremely high-level military experience, has saved the human race several times, has repeatedly shown himself to be cool under pressure and, perhaps most important, he knows what's going to happen in the future...

I knew this site was on to something when I read that several Hollywood actors, including Edward James Olmos ("American Me") and Jamie Bamber ("Agatha Christie: Poirot"), have been spotted wearing Adama '08 T-shirts. And if my hunch is correct, Adama may have a VP pick up his sleeve that could give Sarah Palin a run for her money, lipstick-wise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Social media mobs the national conventions

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.