Wow...Salon, led by Anti-Obama Activist Joan Walsh, has now managed to find yet ANOTHER thing to bash Obama about, and this time, it's arcane software issues.

Do you guys have ANY shame, and is there ANYTHING you won't do to help Hillary get elected?

What's your point? How DARE a company side with a Democrat, and one that ISN'T Hillary, right Salon?

Do you have some sort of big monthly calendar up there on Salon's office wall, with an ongoing schedule of which Salon department will trash Obama this week -- rotating between White House CommDirectorWannabe Joan Walsh, the confused self-hating Debra Dickerson, Farhad Manjoo and others?

What should we expect in coming weeks?

Heather Havrilesky or Stephanie Zacharek deconstructing Obama's latest TV appearances and finding them wanting?

A letter to Cary Tennis, describing someone's disillusionment with Obama and what to do about feeling cast adrift to choose another candidate?

Or shall we look for Patrick Smith, in Ask the Pilot, discussing Obama's inferior airline choices, and how when he flies coach, his knees push up against the seat in front of him, making the passenger in front of him uncomfortable?

Give me a freaking break, Salon.

Your political agenda is transparent, and frankly, it's gotten outright UNCONSCIONABLE.

Just slide it under the rug?

The actual post that Farhad links to is not conspiratorial or accusatory. Farhad's is, though, of course. Because it's coverage of Obama, at Salon, and by nature, it almost always must be designed to take Obama down.

The original article says that IF this happened (and it's not clear that it did), and IF having the advance information constituted a "corporate donation" under federal guidelines (which is not a "given" as there's no financial value assigned to "social networking"), then it MIGHT be (not IS) some sort of campaign finance violation.

It's also just as possible that the Obama campaign jumped quickly on this, and was lucky enough to have on staff the Facebook guy who could put together an application quickly. If he knew what was coming down the pike at Facebook, and that allowed them to be ready to jump the minute the new apps were usable, then GOOD FOR OBAMA FOR GETTING THIS GUY ON STAFF.

And tough luck to the other candidates. Some candidates get lots more money than others. Some have smarter staff. Some have better skills at organizing events. Others have online savvy.

It's called COMPETITION and CAMPAIGNING folks.

Have we gotten to the point where being fortunate enough to have an advantage is something wrong?

This is not Republicans sending out flyers in Maryland trying to confuse people about Michael Steele's party affiliation, or trying to get African Americans to the polls on the wrong day -- and NEVER called to account about..

This is not Diebold, or Halliburton, or Carylye Group, which have REAL political influence and power, and G-d knows WHAT illegal and nefarious activities they are involved in -- and NEVER called to account about.

This is not individuals forming groups so that they can funnel campaign donations through corporate PACs, so that they can put together Swiftboat smear campaigns.

If next week, Myspace announces some sort of new development, and Hillary Clinton has a former Myspace staffer who takes advantage of it before the other candidates, then, lucky Hillary...

I don't necessarily agree with AA that Salon as such has anything against Obama (though sometimes I do wonder). But I do agree that this post has the distasteful flavor of an "inquiring minds want to know" gossip smear rather than any substantial expose of possible wrongdoing.

I really don't see the problem with Facebook contributing technology to Obama's campaign. As AA pointed out, Facebook is not a for-profit enterprise, nor a public media outlet in the usual sense of the term, nor does its influence currently extend beyond a fairly narrow demographic of high school and college students. Many of them aren't even old enough to vote and most of them probably don't have a lot of disposable cash to contribute to a campaign. So what if its founder, a voting citizen, wishes to support Obama in his campaign by offering an avenue of publicity? I truly do not see what is "unfair" or even remotely questionable about this. On the other hand, I do find Mr. Manjoo's unfounded implications of wrongdoing to be both.

"Is it possible that Hughes brought too much of the Facebook magic with him -- including even inside knowledge of an upcoming feature? Levy and Sifry say that if this did occur, Facebook "may have made an illegal in-kind donation to Obama." It's not clear yet that it did. But it doesn't smell too good."

Knowledge is an in-kind donation? If I talk to my neighbor and she tells me that she's wavering in her support of candidate X and I, in favor of candidate Y, call up Y's office and suggest they give my neighbor a call, have I just made an in-kind donation?

I hesitate even to mention the comparison, but it's not as if Obama's campaign is taking this allegedly "inside" knowledge and making a stock market killing with it. The campaign is improving its web presence. Is there something sneaky, shameful, or illegal about that?

If competing campaigns are savvy enough, they'll sign up as beta testers for some other new tech widget and when that widget is ready to launch, they'll have a head start. More power to them.

I'm not an Obama supporter and have not been following Salon's coverage enough to form an opinion on whether Salon is out to get him, but this article really is Whitewater-esque in its whipping up non-news and innuendo into "it doesn't smell too good." Can we please leave that sort of thing to Fox News and out of Salon?

To follow up on my previous post, I recognize that Manjoo is really just passing along without comment the piece on techPresident, but as we've seen with the Swift Boaters, the original hit piece in an obscure corner of the web is not what matters. It's the larger media's uncritical retelling/retailing of the piece that does the real damage to truth.