I’m a conservative, so I have no problem with anyone using their rights to enter the public discourse, and I’m not allergic to corporations. So I when I call the latest from Google “astroturf”, I’m saying it purely to illustrate the hypocrisy of the left, because by their standard Google is becoming quite an installer of the fake grass roots.

I find it entirely unfair that the left gets to try to shout down our side while theirs goes entirely unnoticed. If we don’t at least speak up, then the left’s arguments might get some traction.

So let’s watch carefully. Google has hired Frannie Wellings, the telecommuniations advisor to Senator Byron Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat. Sounds boring, but dig deeper. Dorgan was the author and sponsor of the Senate’s Net Neutrality bill in 2007. Is Google buying access? That’s what the left would say if the parties were reversed.

They’d especially say that when the job that Wellings is taking was just created. She is to be Google’s “federal policy outreach manager.” In other words, she’s going to run Google’s lobbying operations in Washington. Which means either she or people accountable to her are going to be going right back into Dorgan’s office.

Further, before taking the job with Dorgan, Wellings worked at… yup, Free Press, the special interest group that founded and runs Save the Internet.

What a coincidence it is that Google, Save the Internet, and a Democrat Politican are linked like this! Free Press and Google must justify this if they are to continue their shameless attacks on our side, instead of arguing with facts and logic about the benefits and disadvantages of their goal: aggressive regulation of the Internet, centered on an FCC picking winners and losers in private network policy disputes.

The left is at it again. They know that in a straight-up battle of ideas, their socialist perversion of Net Neutrality could never win out. Nobody but the most blindly partisan supporters of Barack Obama wants a government takeover of the Internet, because everybody knows that when government takes something over, freedom in it tends to die.

That is why Save The Internet is resorting to dishonest smear campaigns in an attempt to shout down and discredit their opponents. They want to win by driving all opposition off the field, turning this debate into the Internet equivalent of the streets of Berlin in Weimar Germany. They must not get away with it.

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(Via Gateway Pundit) This got filmed yesterday, and shows an organizer for HCAN giving quick instructions on how to keep Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s constituents from being heard when they raise concerns on the health care rationing bill:

As Glenn Reynolds notes, there’s a certain amount of projection going on, here.

Moe Lane

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If you’re wondering how seriously the administration is taking its tame - some might say, ‘gelded’ - town halls, well:

A look at President Obama’s health care “town hall” Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., shows the president out-spoke his audience by a ratio of nearly 9-to-1.

Here’s the scorecard.

Obama: 8,619 words.

Audience: 1,186 words.

You tell me.

Moe Lane

PS: Anybody else getting the feeling that one of the reasons that Democrats are being so graceless about this entire ‘town hall protest’ thing is because it’s wrecking their vacation?  I mean, really: sitting in Congress and spending our money is such hard work, and here is the mob spoiling the ruling faction’s precious, precious time away from that task.

The nerve of us.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

-TobyToons

Let us, for the moment, leave aside the question of why the media suddenly doesn’t like comparing the President to Hitler. Instead, let us today address the more pressing question of why the media doesn’t like facts.

If you believe Nancy Pelosi, Rep. John Dingell, little girls totally not planted at Obama town halls, and “reporters” asking Gibbs “questions” at today’s White House “briefing,” then you are probably certain that there are scores of hood-clad Klansmen with guns storming the town halls on health care waving swastikas and, incongruously, accusing Obama of being Hitler. Yep, the mob is apparently experiencing a little hate-confusion.

Also, they are actually paid to be there, they are wearing Brooks Brothers suits, and they are elite rich poor white racist trash who’ve never heard of Hawaii, trade stocks by day, clean stocks by night, belong in stocks by right, and above all else, are un-American. Got that?

Yes we are a sordid, motley mob of natty dressers. But most of all, above everything else, we are mean. Mean mean mean. We’re shouting, you see. And putting Hitler mustaches on Obama. Right?

Right?

Heh.

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Stop right there with the Pelosi-parts jokes. I have to see my children with these eyes. I’m only asking because A) I’m getting word overload on “astroturf” and B) astroturf isn’t part of a nefarious plot to drive grass out of existence, so I’m not sure it really fits here.

Yesterday, I posted a story here at RedState featuring screenshots of advertisements from around the country offering to pay people to become Obamacare advocates. I encouraged people to visit craigslist and see what they could find. Judging by the volume of responses at Twitter there are hundreds and hundreds more such ads in major cities from coast to coast.

Many of the ads are from the same handful of organizations, which may lead you to wonder two things. First, where is all this money coming from? Second, how much of this money is coming from Big Labor and Democrats Owner and General Manager, George Soros? Well you wouldn’t be the only person wondering.

Take, for example, John at Verum Serum. John got on the trail of one the most prevalent ads to find out who was behind it. You will NEVER be able to guess where the money trail leads.

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So I received an email/comment this morning about a craigslist ad soliciting health care activism for money. “Activism for money,” I thought!! Was this it at last? The missing link Democrats have been searching for? Obamacare opponents turning up at town halls really are a mob?

We really are nothing but a slew of paid hacks drummed up by the promise of easy cash by cynical Obamacare opponents to create an artificial appearance of opposition?!?

Ummmm, no. (click for full size)

But wait, there’s more!

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Now this should be what worries proponents of health care rationing: citizens showing up in much larger-than-anticipated numbers to complain about an issue - to legislators who agree with them.

U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., learned constituents were more engaged than he may have thought.

Hundreds turned out in Waycross for a town hall meeting Wednesday on House Resolution 3200, the House bill on reform - a discussion Kingston’s staff thought would draw only 50 or 60.

Kingston heard worries over the effect of the bill on businesses, lack of health care choice, and the degraded quality of coverage. Kingston himself said there was too much big government and too much cost in a universal plan.

Via The Campaign Spot.  The aforementioned health care rationing supporters - which is to say, “Democrats” - should be worried for two reasons.  First off, it helps put the lie to the Democrats’ sad allegations that the other side is also faking up grassroots support.  Jack Kingston won his R+16 district by a comfortable margin last year; GA-01 is about the last place you’d choose for astroturfing GOP support for something.  Secondly - and more importantly - stories like this indicate that the Republican rank-and-file has gotten a taste for showing up for events like these.  Which is great… for the GOP, because we don’t have to spend many resources at the moment to get them there and keep them there.  Not so great news for the Democratic party, which will have to have its union contingent spend even more resources to match what we’re doing now.  Which means that anybody from a GOP district should go to their town hall meetings, too.  Not that you should forget your cameras.

Just in case.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

…a Senator who is barely known for defeating Michael Steele in the 2006 election (honestly, Maryland does not have particularly interesting Senators; sorry about that) - anyway, if you can’t get Ben Cardin to sign off on your ‘astroturf’ rhetoric, well, you have a branding problem. Watch as he manfully attempts to avoid sweating on national television over the mess that his higher-ups have landed him in:

Cardin probably saw this poll (via @RobertBluey). 71% of adults want to attend a town hall involving health care, and are currently pegged at 50% for, 45% against. Turn those numbers into likely voters… and now you know why Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) suddenly doesn’t think that health care rationing protesters are ‘un-American‘ after all. Not that she’s planning to actually face all those protesters; even if they are also 2010 voters…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The Senator was never going to be there, in fact - as this post from August 3rd shows. It happens; after all, the Senate’s not out of session quite yet, so if you have to use staffers, you have to use staffers. Announce ahead of time, and the only people adversely affected would be abject idiots, or the people who trust the abject idiots to give them true information.

And, really, how many of them are out there?

Organizing for America distributed an e-mail around midnight on Wednesday urging Democratic activists to attend a town hall meeting in Grafton, NH with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen at 10:00 AM on Thursday.

[snip of explicit statement that Shaheen is going to be there, fearmongering, fearmongering, fearmongering, fearmongering, fearmongering, and then - just for a break in pace - more fearmongering]

There’s just one problem. NowHampshire.com contacted Shaheen’s office who confirms that the senator is in Washington and will not attend the town hall meeting. Staff will field questions in Grafton instead.

If you’re going to astroturf a town hall, Mr. President, complete with premade signs with which to have supporters wave around and everything; anyway, shouldn’t you check to see whether the person who you’re trying to cover for is actually going to be at the town hall meeting in the first place?

Ed Morrissey notes that these are the people who want to run your health care. I note that there were a finite number of people in New Hampshire this morning who came away from this escapade with the reaction that Organizing for America either lied to them, or else doesn’t have a clue about what’s really going on.

Much obliged!

Moe Lane

PS: GraniteGrok is giving some interesting coverage on New Hampshire generally. Check it out.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Hey, who here thinks that the Nation, ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, Firedoglake, and the rest of the Journolist stenographers are going to reference this?

(For those who can’t see it: it shows Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer bragging about cutting out the very funding that a good number of ostensibly-unrelated Left-bloggers and writers are trying to pin on the GOP, in the person of Senator Susan Collins.  And never mind the fact that the cutting was done as a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to bribe the GOP into signing on to the Democrats’ debt bill; or that it was an incredibly tacky unsuccessful bribe in the first place.  Reality-based thinking is somewhat… flexible for the Online Left.)

Yes, neither did I.  Even the ones that aren’t overtly obediently writing whatever they get told to write are busy with their uncritical willingness to accept Democratic talking points as gospel truth (as if it’s our fault that it takes a Cabinet appointment to make a Democrat pay his taxes).  So it’s almost certainly foolish to expect that the dogs linked above will even dare bark at their masters.  Never a good idea to make those who feed you angry, right?

Anyway, see Michelle Malkin, Don Surber, Protein Wisdom, The Sundries Shack, Legal Insurrection, Q & O, AoSHQ, Hot Air, and my unworthy self for more details of what is proving to be all the evidence that you need that not only is the Left-sphere being fed its points: it’s being fed its points sloppily.  Frankly, any of the above could have done a better hit job, even if you assume (as well you should) that we’d be intending to sabotage it…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.