So I wake up today and there's another half dozen trolls swarming diaries that don't even bother trying to hide they're trolling against Obama on a purportedly Democratic website. And that's fine. They bring flame wars, and flame wars bring page hits.

There was an article recently on the NYT about web trolling.

Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying "uncle"? Is the effort to control what's said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?

One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as "god of the Internet" for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what's known as Postel's Law: "Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others." Originally intended to foster "interoperability," the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel's Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could "speak" as clearly as possible yet "listen" to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance -- the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.

The article goes on to describe a worst-case scenario wherein the government actively monitors the net for cases of cyberbullying that are set up to spiral out of control. But there's another option - where moderators and admins of a board take responsibility for the activity on their site, and enforce basic ground rules.

There's far, far worse places online than MyDD - the article describes a few alpha posters at b as an example of the "worst of the worst" (or best of the worst, I suppose) - and I'm certainly not making the comparison between the two. But the article describes a problem that's been hitting boards since they were first Usenet groups, and its hitting MyDD in full force.

Either through apathy or design, complete hands-off moderation (or as is often the case at MyDD, completely random enforcement of the rules and punishments that accompany them) doesn't lead to a thriving, active, intelligent community. It leads to a continual swarm of posters looking to get a rise out of others.

For a site that's supposedly so dedicated to grassroots politics, one would think they'd discover that wasting time and energy on dealing with trolls we can't even TR for fear of "abusing the system" or put on ignore leaves precious little time to discuss politics, much less organize to actually effect something besides their page counts.

Good luck Jerome, Todd, and the rest of the admins. You're probably going to need it. I'll spend my time and my precious page hits at a site that promotes discussion by doing basic pruning.

McCain can't even keep his own base from bleeding out...how's he going to get a majority of the electoral votes?

Meet Joel Haugen...

(Joel) Haugen, a businessman and Army veteran, is running an uphill campaign in a district Wu has held onto against good Republican challengers. So instead of embracing fellow Republicans in a state that's moving increasingly left, Haugen is falling in line with Obama, and he's is listed on State House Speaker Jeff Merkley's website as a backer; Merkley is the Democratic nominee against Senator Gordon Smith.

The endorsements aren't something Haugen is hiding. "We certainly understand why people are so surprised to see" Haugen backing Obama, the campaign writes on its website, citing the Democrat's positions on foreign policy and the economy over John McCain's.

But Haugen's is a position that causes the Oregon Republican Party some heartburn. The state party is continuing to offer tacit support for Haugen's candidacy (though they're not returning his phone calls) while local party officials have shut him out of some events, PolitickerOR reported over the weekend.

Looks like at least one GOP candidate sees the writing on the wall. From Politico.

Now, let's meet Jan Ting, a Republican Committee member for 25 years.

The Delaware Republican Party's standard-bearer in the 2006 race for U.S. Senate has been expelled from his position in the state GOP.

His crime? Quietly supporting Democrat Barack Obama for president.

"Evidently someone went online and saw that I had been making contributions to Obama," Jan Ting said Friday.

Ting also was captured in a photograph at an Obama rally in Wilmington in February that drew record crowds to Rodney Square. At the time, Ting declined to comment about why he was there.

But apparently that appearance, and about $250 in donations to the Illinois senator, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was enough for the state party to brand Ting a traitor, according to the former Republican candidate.

State GOP Chairman Tom Ross said Friday he was unaware of details of the situation with Ting, noting it happened before he took over.

"I certainly didn't throw Jan out of the party," he said, adding he was aware of Ting's support for Obama.

After the Obama photo appeared, Ting said he was invited to an April meeting at a coffee shop in Pennsylvania. State GOP regional chairman Bill Sahm and a district chairman informed Ting his Obama activities had been discussed at the highest levels of the state party.Ting said they told him, "unless you are willing to recant that and swear allegiance to the party nominee John McCain, we are compelled to request your resignation from the Republican Committee."

From Delaware Online.

Nothing says "winning campaign" and "enthusiastic base" like defecting state party representatives!

I know its so much fun to panic over the latest poll in an individual state and pontificate on just how horrible Obama's doing.

Isn't it awesome that candidates aren't elected off polls? Its the electoral college that wins elections. And Obama's sweeping it.

pollster.com

realclearpolitics.com

fivethirtyeight.com

Oh but my precious outlier polls! How will I ever live without them?

You can keep 'em, but why not add a little thing I like to call "context". Check the trends:

Its hard to get panicked when you have reality and context on your side. The reality? The electoral college results determines the President, not the percentage polls (not even the national ones). The context? The trends have yet to point in McCain's direction - even by a piddling amount - since the primaries were over.

Why should I be so concerned again?

Oh my godddd Obama's in sooo much trouble! We better ditch this horse midstream, right? Right?!?!

Wrong. At least according to the McCain campaign insiders themselves.

Before you let trolls concern you over just how terrible - terrible! - Obama's doing, check out the real mood over in Camp McCain.

The real question is what all of this might mean for a McCain presidency. The list of troubling portents is growing long: repeated campaign staff upheavals reflecting poor management skills; abrupt reversals on big issues like tax cuts and relations with Russia (where he was superhawk one day and superdove the next); shameless pandering on a gas-tax holiday that even his own economic advisers think is a joke; confused handling of Social Security that annoys all sides of the debate; bogus charges (e.g., Obama is causing high gas prices, Obama didn't visit wounded soldiers because he couldn't take the press) that undermine his integrity; and an angry, bunker mentality among aides that one GOP operative, fearing excommunication from Team McCain if identified, describes as "lacking only a Luger and a cyanide pill."

Oh, well, when you put it that way, Obama not dancing on the head of a pin doesn't seem that apocalyptic, does it?

But this is not 1988, when Vice President George Bush turned Michael Dukakis into an unpatriotic coddler of criminals. (Bush that year had a popular president and a strong economy behind him.) And it's not 2004, when his son Swift-Boated John Kerry. (The president would have likely won anyway by playing on post-9/11 fear.) This year, McCain is running under a tattered Republican banner, with more than 80 percent of the public thinking the country is on the wrong track. Without some compelling vision beyond support for offshore drilling, the negativity may well boomerang. "It's hard to imagine America responding to 'small ball' when we have all these problems," says John Weaver, McCain's chief strategist in 2000 who was pushed out of the campaign last year.

With the exception of Mark Salter, who is still friendly with Weaver, the rest of McCain's high command says Weaver is just bitter and disloyal. "Actually, it's being loyal," Weaver says. "I want him to win." He's despondent over the destruction of a priceless maverick brand. McCain's zesty Theodore Roosevelt-style attacks on corporate greed and inspiring plans for expanding national service are gone, replaced by Karl Rove's playbook. "When was the last time you heard the word 'reform' or 'service' come out of his mouth?" Weaver asks. "We need to return to the John McCain who speaks his mind. Instead, it's Dick Butkus running a West Coast Offense or Wilt Chamberlain playing point guard. It's not going to work."

The hand wringers can backseat drive all they want. They didn't get Obama to the general election and they're sure as hell not going to win it for him. McCain's camp apparently sees the writing on the wall a lot more clearly.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a lengthy article presenting a subtle but terrifying point of consideration - that ABC, and very possibly the government, was at the very least complicit in presenting the anthrax scare immediately after 9/11 as the work of Iraq, paving the way to public support for the war.

I implore you to take the time to read the entire thing. Greenwald is extremely well sourced and includes numerous examples showing how anthrax was used as a catalyst for support for the war, both for the media and the government. Except that this link between the anthrax and Iraq - the presence of bentonite - that was touted was entirely false. And that this false information was actively promoted by the media as the case to invade Iraq.

An attempt at summation follows:

In 2001 anthrax was sent to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

   And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:

   The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.

Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

So not only has ABC either falsified or didn't check at all their "sources" who claimed that bentonite was found in the anthrax (which was the smoking gun leading the public to swallow the idea that Saddam was responsible for it), but the only place that those sources could have come from was on a level that had direct contact with the actual source of the anthrax - the now deceased Bruce Ivins at Ft. Detrick.

And ABC has never once retracted their report, nor followed up on who their sources were.

Considering this was the major source of the public push for war in Iraq, ABC has an ethical responsibility to report who their sources were that provided deliberately false and misleading information.

Not only the public push, but the government ran with this as well:

And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this claim:

   The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq.

John McCain, on the David Letterman Show, October 18, 2001 (days before ABC News first broadcast their bentonite report):

   LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

   MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine . . . I think we'll do fine. The second phase -- if I could just make one, very quickly -- the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq.

   LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

   MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

ThinkProgress has the video. Someone ought to ask McCain what "indication" he was referencing that the anthrax "may have come from Iraq."

Presidential candidate John McCain was on national television, prior to ABC's false story, parroting the exact same false talking point. Where did he get his information from?

Will we demand answers from ABC and John McCain, and the rest of this administration?

Even as a lame duck, Bush can't help but try to push some truly twisted ideological viewpoints in an attempt to infringe on our rights...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them "abortion."  These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.

These rules pose a serious threat to providers and uninsured and low-income Americans seeking care. They could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services. They'll also build significant barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those who need it most: low-income and uninsured women and men.

The regulations could even invalidate state laws that currently ensure access to contraception for many Americans. In fact, they describe New York and California's laws requiring prescription drug insurance plans to provide coverage for contraceptives as part of "the problem." These rules would even interfere with New York State law that ensures survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

Senator Hillary Clinton is sounding the alarm on this one at Huffington Post, channeling supporters to sign the petition at her HillPAC site.

Senator Clinton knows full well what it will take to fight for reproductive rights for everyone, male and female, in the coming years, and knows that a McCain presidency is going to be exactly more of this same ideological nonsense coming from the Bush Administration. Thank you to Senator Clinton for raising the alert on this attempt, and for truly championing women's rights in a real and concrete way.

This election isn't about Obama. It isn't about Hillary Clinton, either, or the lack thereof.

Its not about your hurt feelings, your sudden devotion to all things female-equality (even though apparently symbolic support is more important than legislative), your foot-stomping toy-throwing threats to take your vote and go home lest your demands are met, or your quixotic quest for attention (sorry, "teaching the Democratic party a lesson").

Its not about your liberal ideals, the voice of the netroots, the ideology of the left, or withholding your donation until the nominee jumps as high as you want him to (I'm looking at you, Kos).

America has had a culture of extremes for so long I'm beginning to think that moderation (especially in the political process) is something that we just can't recognize when we see it.

Our country and our economy is crumbling around us. But that's not even the real reason for this diary.

The rest of the world is depending on us to realize that the planet's most vulnerable moment is not the time to start gasping in hysterics because Obama left his magic problem-solving wand back in Fantasyland.

Its your choice to determine if you care more about the ability of a politician to stroke your ego, or about what happens to our country (and by extension, the world, since we're doing a great job of messing it up far beyond our reasonable sphere of influence). And frankly speaking, none of us really have the luxury of deciding our principles are more important than our economy, the war, the environment, and the lives of Iraqis and Iranian civilians.

Maybe you honestly think that Obama's going to be just as bad as McCain (despite any evidence to the contrary, like actual policy). Vote for him anyway. Hedge your bets. The world is full of choices between options you probably aren't completely in love with. Learning that is a skill most people get comfortable with before they're out of high school - election years aren't a free pass.

If you want immediate, complete reform, take it to the streets. Light up that Molotov cocktail, strap on your AK and overthrow whatever you need to overthrow.

Or, work within the system with what we have. What we have is a perfectly good, centrist candidate who can at least approach complex issues with a sharp stick and poke at them, and who's savvy enough to take advantage of the anti-Bush sentiment to gain some extra seats in the legislature at the same time. There's not a damn thing wrong with that and in a lot of ways its better than other election years. Because a sympathetic legislature is how things get done. Not voting third party to make a point, not holding your breath until UberLiberal McCandidate rises from the Potomac River, and not clinging to a candidate that didn't get the nomination.

So the concern trolls, the ones who flock to any diary asking "well, what has Obama done/said about X?" like you're making some kind of point - you should really put up or suck it up. I expect to see your keyboard commando butts out there leading the the revolutionaries in the charge to storm the White House, or voting for Obama in November.

I had hoped this wasn't true. But in the interest of intellectual and political fairness, I think its important that all Democrats see this in order to understand just what will happen in the next few months leading up to November.