Talking Points; Whack-A-Mole Times Infinity

On Monday, I mentioned astroturfing by a Dem connected PR firm promoting professionally acted and edited YouTube video hit jobs against Governor Palin. The videos were jerked down, in the wee hours of Monday, when The Jawa Report hackers reported their discovery that the videos were paid for by someone connected with the Dem friendly PR firm.

Astroturfing
When professionals pretend to be regular Joes and Janes doing grass roots efforts.

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Today, this blog received what I suspect is an astroturf comment in this post: Getting myself educated about Fannie and Freddie. I don't know that it is astroturf. I am guessing. I could be wrong. Let's parse and study why I suspect the comment was written by an operative:

Anonymous said...

First red flag. Like a one way airline ticket, "Anonymous" fits a profile.

I think the people on the right are in denial. The congress and the senate were controlled by the republican party from 1994 to 2006 and Bush has been in office for the past, almost 8 years but everything they screw up is all Clinton's fault.

I'm sorta with Anonymous. Repubs drive me crazy. The party gained power and then squandered it at a pork buffet. Republicans were immoral. They deserved to lose their power in Congress.

And to think they promised to return responsibility and ethics to government and yet this has been the most secretive government since Ulysses Grant.

"[T]he most secretive government" is a talking point.

Amid the Constitutionally designed struggle for power among the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches (it's a feature of our government system, not a bug), the Bushies have tried to protect the power of the Executive. Congress/left/media have used "secretive" as a talking point to bash the Bushies for failing to kowtow to the Legislative via ceding various Executive powers. The Clinton Administration ceded some Executive Branch power. GWB has reclaimed and protected some legitimate Executive Branch powers. The U.S. Government is not a Parliament.

Of course Bush wanted to "overhaul" [Fannie and Freddie] but do a little more checking and you'll find that imposing regulations wasn't what he had in mind at all.

Now I'm suspicious this commenter is an operative. "Do a little more checking"? A serious commenter would leave a link to justify their accusation. "[I]mposing regulations wasn't what [GWB] had in mind at all". The commenter is a mind reader now? If there were evidence GWB was covering for a nefarious plan, the commenter would gleefully link to it, and I would want to read about it. I call horse manure.

He wanted to give Wall Street and his uber-rich even more power (taking that power away from congress and we the people).

Horse. Manure. There's no evidence for the Wall St./uber rich pap. Fantasy.

"[T]aking that power away from Congress". The Executive Branch cannot "take" power. That's more fantasy. The Legislative can keep their Constitutional power or cede it. If they cede it, the Executive can accept the gift. There is no "take".

I was a republican for 26 yrs but I started waking up and smelling the coffee around 2003 and I changed parties in 2004 (if you'd told me 10 years ago that I'd ever been a democrat I'd have told you "never").

Big red flag. Maybe half or more Repubs used to be Dems, but almost no adult goes the other way. The few who do: Arianna Huffington, David Corn, never really believed in maximizing opportunity. They were always susceptible to the siren song of equality of outcome.

In the blogosphere, virtually the only persons who say "I used to be a Republican" are Dem operatives pretending to be regular Joes and Janes, and fishing for converts and/or Barack votes. Regular Joes and Janes don't claim such things, as virtually no one stops being conservative and goes left. Once a person has pieced together the mental calculations and reasoning to become conservative, they stay conservative.

At this point, I'm thinking it's a strong bet Anonymous is an operative. And look what comes next: talking points and fantasy.

Stop listening to a.m. radio and Faux and biased news (Fox). And don't let your preacher tell you how to vote. The wall st folks are in cahoots with the religious right and it is through the efforts of the religious reich that they've been able to fool ordinary people into voting against their own economic interests. Tell the people that "God's people" only vote republican and you are able to trick them and steal their money.

I've left a link in the other comments, on the off chance Anonymous is a Regular Joe or Jane. The way to display legitimacy is to come into these comments and link to your blog, or to some type of comments or Photostream or MySpace or Twitter which will show legitimacy. The way to fail to show legitimacy is to come into these comments and change the subject away from the myriad accusations you have already arrayed like widely dispersed Whack-A-Moles. If this is truly conversation, let's not make it Whack-A-Mole Times Infinity. If you wish to converse about the subjects you have already raised, I would love to hear from you.

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Update:
Anonymous might not be a paid operative. He left a second comment at the original post. Such is not typical astroturfing behavior. Anonymous may be a Joe or Jane citizen! Yet: his second comment was filled with new talking point accusations. We'll see if anything else happens.