Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

From Emptywheel

apparently, Minneapolis’ Joint Terrorist Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate vegan potlucks to look for potential–what?–tahini enthusiasts?–in advance of the RNC convention this fall.

“[FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola] told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

Yeah, it’s the vegans we have to worry about. This is just completely ridiculous. As pointed out in Matt Snyder’s article from Minneapolis

“This is all part of a larger government effort to quell political dissent,” says Jordan Kushner, an attorney who represented Ganley and other Critical Mass arrestees. “The Joint Terrorism Task Force is another example of using the buzzword ‘terrorism’ as a basis to clamp down on people’s freedoms and push forward a more authoritarian government.”

Hey, at least it’s just the vegans they’re after. It’s not like they’e tapping all of our phones illegally, or creating databases of millions to round up in case of “national emergencies”, or torturing people. Not in the US, we go to war to stop that kind of thing.

Here’s what stands out for me: integrated email and user blogs. (Click the graphic for a larger image. I’ve outlined the key features)

* Love the integrated email inbox. This way, regular Shine visitors can check their Y mail right from the front-page of the site.
* User-created blogs and blog posts! There is already a ton of activity on the blogs, and with comments from fellow visitors.

Now… I am pretty sure that this would be the first Yahoo! property to launch user-created blogs. Which means the Media group, and their new Lifestyles section, continues to blaze some trails in UGC on the major portals. (Y Health was the first to launch expert blogs, back when I was product manager and working with two awesome teams — the Health team and the Expert Blogging team).

The new blogs are powered by the social media system that my next team developed and it brings a huge smile to my face to see these blogs come to life on the new property. Just a few weeks ago it was Y Buzz (also phugc-powered) and now Y Shine. Nice.

If you think that type of user-created content is cool, then check out my new startup Thingfo, and our next-generation community platform. Thingfo enables contextual user-content creation based on the activities of a site’s visitors, and links our customer sites to the social web and their user’s existing social networks. Integrating a successful site with the social web is going to be critical going forward, and Thingfo is here to help.

In the meantime, it’s great to see the continued rollout of some great user-created content from the platforms I worked on at Yahoo!, from the new Y! Buzz to the Shine Blogs. Shine on.

This video is courtesy of the incomparable Glenn Greenwald, who reminds us that

The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media’s discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation — views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts — ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: “virtually never.”

Rose was as adversarial and argumentative — angry, even — as he ever gets with anyone, because he plainly did not anticipate, and did not like, that he was being exposed to such hostility towards our Freedom-spreading, Liberty-loving Liberation of the grateful, lucky (dead and displaced) Iraqi people.

I’ll also point out that Rose cut off Sinan Antoon, when Antoon tried to talk about the *actual* reason for the invasion, not the Bush Administration’s shifting rationale. He said that there was an “acquisition” of Iraq. At which point, Rose changed the subject. I would have loved to hear the opinions of actual Iraqis on that one.

Anyway… please do watch the video above. If you’ve got more time, you may want to peruse more Glenn and Digby and Emptywheel.

Yes, I was going to try and keep this blog non-political and keep politics to my politics-only-blog… but I just can’t.

Myers’ and Dawkins’ interview is really funny:

Richard Dawkins best line (imho):
“What astonishes me about this, it’s an incredible piece of inept public relations to expel somebody not just from any film, but from a film about expelling people for their beliefs… a film in which you are present, acknowledged, and thanked.”

Here is PZ’s take on the affair. Found via Tristero.

Portions of the speech:
—————————-
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the OJ trial; or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina; or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction, and then another one, and then another one. And nothing will change.

….

There’s one story in particular that I’d like to leave you with today, a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, 23-year-old woman, a white woman named Ashley Baia, who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina.

OBAMA: She’d been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was 9 years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. That’s the mind of a 9 year old.

She did this for a year until her mom got better. And so Ashley told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she had joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now, Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign.

OBAMA: They all have different stories and different reasons. Many bring up a specific issue.

And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there.

And he doesn’t bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama.

He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

(APPLAUSE)

“I’m here because of Ashley.”

Now, by itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger.

And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document right here in Philadelphia, that is where perfection begins.

“Whiteboard Wisdom”, courtesy of chris.newman on Flickr

Then this morning I saw this Twitter:

Thanks, ontask.

From a citizen supporter of Jackie Broyles for President. You may not know of Jackie yet, so go check out RedStateUpdate to get more familiar. These guys are hilarious, and the ad makes a great mockery of the fearmongering the US has gotten used to.

“We’re more scared now then we’ve ever been before. Get scared-er!”