Salsa Scoop> tag: ”blog:astroturf“

Vigilance against the Counterrevolutionary Tea Parties!

by Jason Z.

To: People's Central Soviet
Fr: DemocracyInAction
Dt: Wealth Expropriation Day, 2009
Re: Counter-revolutionary elements

Comrades!

It has come to the attention of the Commissariat of Political Statism (ComPoSt) that some rascals and reactionary elements remain insufficiently suppressed, and a palpable danger to our decrepit regime.

ComPoSt informers have determined that Narodniks are plotting anti-progressive uprisings that may number in the dozens. Furthermore, these subversives may be planning to destroy chai ration cards in defiance of the ulamah.

Appropriations for DemocracyInAction from George Soros (laundered as per usual) have enabled us to infiltrate saboteurs among this parasitical element, but organizers are on their guard against our false flag operations.

Beware of violence!

Putschists are openly arming and boast of having "literally ... shoved out of the way" those "that have attempted to control the freedom movement."

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Congressional Email and the Myth of the Platonic Grove

With Capitol Hill a ghost town as members scramble to retain their peerages, the lull in legislative activity offers welcome pause to step back from the e-mail deliverability fracas of recent weeks.

A great many of the unmet expectations and bad feelings that have become bundled up in online write-your-rep actions ultimately trace to the unspoken assumptions various parties have about the communicative framework in which the action takes place.

That point was underscored in the live chat with Washington Post reporter Jeffrey Birnbaum the day his column ran Capitol Advantage's deliverability study. In response to a question about how to differentiate grassroots campaigns from astroturf, Birnbaum opined, "I'm afraid if an interest group incites a flood of e-mails, that's Astroturf lobbying by definition."

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