In a blog post, Draper, a principal at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, recounted all the political figures he met at the Alfalfa Club over the weekend — Sarah Palin, John McCain, Vernon Jordan, and other "Washington insiders."

Here's his advice to Michelle Obama on how to set herself up as Marie Antoinette 2.0:

I also met Our First Lady, Michelle Obama for the first time, who is charming and stunning in person. I suggested that she go out shopping with her daughters for a press event to get people buying things and getting this economy moving again, and she said, “Great idea. Go tell Barack—go tell the President that.” So I did. He looked across at her and smiled. I think we have a great President.

Also, Draper wants to hire former Florida governor Jeb Bush as a venture capitalist. It sounds like it was a lovely time. Except for all those same insiders who are destroying our country from the inside:

My conclusion there: I think our capital should move out of DC. The people there are too insulated from their country. They become a cancer for the people who come to Washington trying to make a difference. Not many of them made any real connection between our business environment and our economy. Even my limo driver there was trying to get more money out of government, not realizing where that money was actually coming from. The NYC drivers know.

Given Draper's political background, perhaps his lurching between hero-worshipping and backstabbing isn't that surprising. Draper, a Republican, chaired three fundraisers in Silicon Valley for George W. Bush, then declared himself for Barack Obama in 2008. He gave no money to John McCain, but wrote that he was "the nicest man ever" when he met him at the Alfalfa Club event. (McCain must be, for not snubbing Draper after that financial diss!)

Then again, Valley insiders know not to expect consistent behavior from Draper, an excitable sort who's known to strip off his shirt and burst into song to celebrate companies he's funded (as in the clip above). But his bizarre persona likely won't play as well outside the fruits-nuts-and-flakes atmosphere of northern California.

ComScore, a Web-traffic measurement firm, reports that visitors to Hulu.com dropped 11 percent from October to November, when it only drew 4.8 million viewers. NBC.com dropped by half, from 14.1 million to 7.2 million. Which only makes sense, says Peter Kafka at MediaMemo, since NBC.com and Hulu were the two places where people could see legal copies of Tina Fey's Palin impressions for Saturday Night Live.

Look, I realize Palin has gone back to Juneau to sort through all the clothing the Republican National Committee bought for her. But new media badly needs some star power. Can't we give her her own YouTube channel or something?

• A Dell Latitude D620 laptop for $417.00.
• A Dell Latitude D820 laptop for $570.00.
• Brother multifunction printer for $189.00.
• RIM Blackberry 8700c for $30.00.
• Folding chairs for $3.60 each.
• A 55-cup steel coffee urn for $77.00.
• A power strip for $1.
• Ethernet cables for $1 a pound.

Move quickly, though — Andrew Freeman, a McCain campaign staffer, told the Washington Post "the sale will be over soon." Target mission coffee table, only $60!

(Photoillustration by Richard Blakeley)

In an age of Photoshop, Iran can have as many missiles as it wants; headlines can be faked; and bodies altered beyond any relationship to the real human form. But the problem of identity goes far deeper.

Stephen Glass, as a writer for The New Republic, created a website for a fake company, Jukt Micronics, for a story; Forbes exposed this lie, and countless others. But today, Glass might well have gotten away with it. Convincingly complete websites are easy to assemble. They don't even require human hands: Automated software cobbles together topical websites from republished copy scoured from the Web to trick Google into giving them free advertising revenue. And someone looking to hide their identity can now use proxy services to register domain names anonymously.

For that matter, the Internet's domain-name system — the root of all online identity — is dangerously vulnerable. Earlier this year, security researcher Dan Kaminsky found a nearly fatal flaw that would allow hackers to hijacks visits to website and redirect viewers to alternate ones. That flaw has mostly been fixed, but who knows what other ones await discovery? By tricking the systems which route a request for a domain name — nytimes.com, for example — to the right server, a troublemaker might not just fake up a headline, but an entire alternate version of the Times online.

Trust for media, old and new, continues to decline. Readers demand speed, punishing sluggish outlets by withholding their attention. Celerity replaces seriousness as a measure of authority. Who said what? Can you believe it? And does it matter, as long as you were the first to know?

Billionaire George Soros once pledged to use his wealth to get Bush out of office. Yeah, we knew he'd bail early. But what happens if the Obama-struck news media decides to foot the bill? If you're right that there's nothing to see, you'll be searching her mails until you retire. Wrong, and you'll need another excuse soon. (Photo by AP/David Zalubowski)

Two problems with this ruling:
1. He can use the internet for e-mail. Did the judge specify whose account?
2. His next assignment for school: how to screw up a candidate's vice presidential hopes and dreams.

So why did the HP execs and investigators get off scot-free (or with a 96-hours-of-community-service slap-on-the-wrist), while Kernell is having FBI agents raid his apartment? Ahhh, yes, money walks. Kernell may not.

(Photo by AP)

The authorities won't say, but consensus has it the Tennessee college student under investigation is one David Kernell, a 20-year-old whose father, Mike Kernell, is a Democrat in the Tennessee state legislature. His email address is rubicon10@yahoo.com, which matches the name of a 4chan user — Rubico — who posted a detailed confession of the hack on the site last week. Also, whoever broke into Palin's account first changed the password to "popcorn," which could be a pun on Kernell's last name.

rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:57:22 No.85782652

Hello, /b/ as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on /b/, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.

In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.

after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.

I found out later though 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…

>> rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:58:04 No.85782727

this is all verifiable if some anal /b/tard wants to think Im a troll, and there isn’t any hard proof to the contrary, but anyone who had followed the thread from the beginning to the 404 will know I probably am not, the picture I posted this topic with is the same one as the original thread.

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

I then started a topic on /b/, peeps asked for pics or gtfo and I obliged, then it started to get big

Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Then the white knight fucker came along, and did it in for everyone, I trusted /b/ with that email password, I had gotten done what I could do well, then passed the torch , all to be let down by the douchebaggery, good job /b/, this is why we cant have nice things.

The Federal Election Commission's rules require that all "public communications" include a disclaimer:

... a statement placed on a public communication that identifies the person(s) who paid for the communication and, where applicable, the person(s) who authorized the communication.

That's why, on television ads, you hear Barack Obama and John McCain say, "I approved this message."

But there's no such approval on the Facebook ads — or any other indication who paid for them. Internet politicking is exempt from many election laws. But there's one big exception: paid online advertising is treated the same as other forms of advertising. In a classic piece of regulatory doublespeak, the FEC says:

General public political advertising does not include Internet ads, except for communications placed for a fee on another person’s web site

Got that? No Internet advertising is covered, except for all Internet advertising.

There is one possible loophole MoveOn's Facebook ads could skirt under — a provision for "small items
upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed." Facebook's smallest ad format restricts the number of words an advertiser can use, arguably making it inconvenient to provide a disclaimer. But that defense seems specious; they could simply buy a larger-format ad, or link to a website which makes the identity of the advertiser clear.

Matt Hicks, a Facebook spokesman, told the Journal that the ads comply with Facebook's policies. It's true that Facebook allows political advertising. But Facebook's terms for advertisers have other rules which MoveOn may be violating:

• Ads must clearly state and represent the company, product, or brand that is being advertised.
• In both ad text and image, you must not include any content that may be deemed as infringing upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary right, or that is deceptive or fraudulent.
• Ads may not contain, facilitate or promote defamatory, libelous, slanderous and/or unlawful content.

In fairness to Facebook's rulemakers, this may be an issue above their pay grade. Other forms of online advertising, like Google's AdWords, could easily be used for similar campaigns. Text ads' targeted audience, short duration, and ease of alteration will make it hard for rival campaigns to track such activity. Without a disclosure, only Google or Facebook will know who's paying for a message. The FEC will have to rule on whether its disclaimer requirements apply to short text ads. But it's hard to see why they don't.