astroturfing

The American public generally didn;t think the "hope and change" it voted for was going to include borrowing a trillion dollars from the Chinese to pay for condoms, DTV converter boxes, ACORN subsidies and building new schools next to vacant old ones. So support for Obamanomics is dropping faster than than a guy executing a HALO skydiving jump.

So, who comes to the rescue....Moveon.org.  Just a few weeks ago they were blast e-mailing members demanding a halt to the second $350 Billion TARP installment; now that Obama wants to spend almost three times as much they are gung ho to spend , spend, spend.

And to try and astroturf public opinion to promote this. Here's their latest missive.

.   Dear MoveOn member,

President Obama's economic stimulus plan is in trouble. Conservative talking points are dominating the media's coverage and there's lots of misinformation around. Here are a few things you may not have heard about it:  

1) This is a very, very good bill. As The Nation writes, "If enacted, the economic recovery plan will be one of the biggest and boldest pieces of progressive legislation in the past forty years."1  

Here are some facts about what the bill really does:  

• Creates or saves 3 million to 4 million jobs in the next two years.2

•  Averts "literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs"—and doubles funding for the Department of Education.3

• Creates 500,000 green jobs and doubles our clean energy production.4

• Immediately helps unemployed folks get affordable health insurance.5

Some folks are arguing that it should be bigger, and they're probably right, but this is the best down payment on economic recovery we have seen, and it needs to be passed.   

2) The stuff that's being singled out for criticism amounts to a tiny fraction of the bill—like anti-smoking programs that make up less than one-ten-thousandth of the spending.6 They would have you believe this is the centerpiece of the bill. It is not. This kind of nit-picking is pure politics.

3) If it doesn't pass, we're in deep trouble. Even John McCain's economic adviser estimates that without the stimulus, unemployment would top 11% by 2010, the highest level since the Great Depression.7

We all urgently need to get these facts out before the public. Can you write a letter to the editor of your local paper about how the stimulus will affect real people? Our tool makes writing a letter really easy. Click here to get started:  

http://pol.moveon.org/lte?campaign_id=100&id=15490-9234983-pocSV6x&t=3

Last week alone, 100,000 people lost their jobs in this country.8 So we need to make sure the Senate takes action quickly. Nearly 200 economists from across the political spectrum wrote to Congress, agreeing:

"We do not have the luxury of a lengthy debate over the best course of action. This legislation may not be enough to solve all the economy's problems, but it is urgently needed and an important step in the right direction."9  

But with so much rhetoric and demagoguery surrounding the bill, it won't pass unless we can get the real facts out to a wide audience. And letters to the editor by local MoveOn members are one of the best ways to set the record straight.

Our tool makes it super easy. We'll provide you with talking points to use, some tips on writing your letter, and an easy way to send it in to any newspaper in your area. You can start writing your letter to the editor by clicking here:  

Now, I really don't think one is going to take The Nation seriously as to whether this bill is going to restart the free market economy.  And I might also suggest that Speaker Pelosi and the "Center for American Progress" aren;t very unbiased sources, either.

Perhaps the folks at Moveon ought to look at the words left out of their sales pitch. Hmmm.."deficit" and "debt" don;t appear anywhere.  Unlike the spinmeisters , the American public has an innate sense of when money is spent, it needs to be found somewhere.  And frankly, neither I nor most people I know think we are going to get a trillion dollars worth of bang for the trillion bucks we are going to have to borrow. 

Just to prove what craven saps these guys are, I'm sure if Obama proposed putting tens of thousands of manufacturing workers out of a job with this proposal,     they'd have a preprinted LTE ready to go to promote issuing pink slips to shipbuilders and aircraft workers. 

Perhaps there is a better way to stablize the economy than a trillion dollars of newly added permanent federal debt. And Moveon.org wants nothing of trying to figure that out. Because for them. expanding the federal government is a feature, not a bug.

The truth is setting us free. And the Left's response is to fight with....

Hey guys, think natural next time...... we are and it's working;

Gotcha! It has taken some time and effort to raise awareness of the danger of infiltration by fake 'grassrooters' (so-called astroturfers), who infiltrate the enemy camp to engage in a bout of flooding, swarming, the dissemination of disinformation, the dropping of compromising material and using psyops meant to demoralize the opposition (Hillary's Eeyores). Ever since very early on in the US Presidential campaign I was accosted at the staunchly conservative forum Townhall for writing a comment that was somewhat critical of then Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, I have been suspecting this to be going on for some time. It's one of those typical Postmodernist approaches to politics as all out war under the banner of "our end is so ethical that it justifies the use of immoral means". With hindsight it makes the post "Confessions of an Astroturfing Troll" look entirely credible and genuine (at the time the story broke it still had a sense of the paranoia, or of a clever double bluff). It is well known that if the lie is big enough it is easily accepted by the masses. But 90 separate, uncoordinated incidences is a stretch even by the standards of those who have us believe, there's no such thing as a left wing press. They have been manipulating reality for so long and to such an appalling extent, that they can no longer distinguish their own manufactured truths from the real one. Vigilance is from hereon the word in all corners of the conservasphere. Here's the full press release issued by Team Sarah activist, Susan B. Anthony List.

~~-:-~~

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 8, 2009 CONTACT: Joy Yearout (703) 875-3370 or jyearout@sba-list.org

Liberal Activists Plot to Defame and Destroy Leading Online Community for Conservative Activists, TeamSarah.org Teams Sarah Uncovers Evidence of Dirty Tricks, Criticizes Huffington Post Story that Relied Upon False Information

Washington, D.C. – Today leaders of the Susan B. Anthony List responded to the recent discovery of a plot by liberal internet activists to attack www.teamsarah.org, a community dedicated to advancing the values that Sarah Palin represents in the political process:

“Team Sarah recently uncovered a plot by liberal activists to frame our community for harboring hate speech and bigotry,” said Emily Buchanan, Executive Director of the Susan B. Anthony List and Team Sarah Site Administrator. “Liberal extremists at www.somethingawful.com concocted a plot to join Team Sarah under false pretenses and intentionally provoke our members by posting incendiary and bigoted remarks that violated our terms of use.”

Susan B. Anthony List President and Team Sarah Co-Founder Marjorie Dannenfelser offered the following statement:

“Two weeks ago, the Huffington Post published a story criticizing Team Sarah for the supposed racist behavior of its membership – yet had they exercised even the most basic of fact-checking, we could have informed them of the recent escalation in bigoted postings from liberal impostors, not from our bona fide membership.”

“Clearly Governor Sarah Palin’s influence has irked the Left. Here we are months after the election, and liberal extremists are still doing all they can to tear her down. Fortunately the truth will prevail. Team Sarah will continue to grow and its membership will continue to advance the values represented by the trailblazing governor.”

The coordinated attack by liberal bloggers was discovered on Friday, January 2, 2009. The Weekly Standard covered the incident on January 7, 2009. Over ninety impostors were banned from www.teamsarah.org last weekend after bona fide Team Sarah members reported violations to community moderators. Interlopers continue to be banned daily.

One of the attackers explained their goal: "What I hope is that the fake posters eventually number the actual posters so it would be impossible to tell who is real and who is fake."

After a cease and desist letter was sent by Team Sarah to the site administrator of www.somethingawful.com on Friday January 2, 2009, the offending forum was removed from the website, but new forums have since been posted. Attacks have continued, most recently including today’s planned 2:00A.M. mass posting of pornography photos in Team Sarah forums.

Team Sarah is a coalition of women dedicated to advancing the values that Sarah Palin represents in the political process. Its political networking website, www.teamsarah.org, has grown to over 60,000 activists in the last four months. Co-Founders of Team Sarah include Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List, and Jane Abraham, the organization’s General Chairman.

www.teamsarah.org

www.sba-list.org

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