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October 01, 2008 04:34 PM UTC

Astro Turfing Colorado Pols

  • 110 Comments
  • by: ClubTwitty

(Welcome McCain trolls and sock puppets! Our readers tend to self-regulate (see below), but we love you for your pageviews – promoted by Colorado Pols)

The number of trolls popping up like mushrooms in a cow pasture after the monsoons is celarly a concerted effort.

Colorado Pols is being ‘astro turfed’ in another McCainian plot of desperation.

The source of all knowledge–Wikipedia–notes:

Astroturfing in American English is a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.

The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity-a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (“outreach”, “awareness”, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. …Very often the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research.

More…

Over at the McCain/Palin intertube site, we learn:

Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain’s policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the United States and we need you to tell others why.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

The plethora of trolls on the site of late has been noted by many. In this case, with Colorado so much in play, I think there is more at work.   ColoradoPols is being targeted by political operatives intent on smearing Obama by raising the same set of issues over and over in non-creative ways.    

Not only are the troll’s reasoning and discursive skills lacking, but they are not very good at hiding their tracks.

Our own Barron X–no raging liberal, but imminently reasonable and in possession of incredible IP analyzing powers–noted in one comment:

can you explain why 4 new users who registered today within 2  hours of each other

all use the same IP address?  Is it like carpooling ?

Like cockroaches a little light sends them scurrying, since they seldom post facts, eschew sound logic, and don’t care to play by the mores that define a blog community.  

Unlike cockroaches, however, they probably are neither multiplying nor built for survival.  Soon their McCain golf balls will be interesting trivia hanging out in their junk drawer, like my Mondale pin.

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110 thoughts on “Astro Turfing Colorado Pols”

        1. I went to school every other year.  I’d drop out to make money or ski and then went back the next year.  It took me eight years to get through.

    4. We’ll be immediately taking this up with our software provider to be sure, but not even our front-page diarists should be able to see IP address.

      Note that any evidence we uncover of malicious activity will be swiftly dealt with.

            1. He is the one that made the assertion that he could read I/P addresses.

              And we all know how fond you are of facts so I wanted to be the first to let you know so you could apologize to Twitty.

              I’ll just sit here now and hold my breath, waiting for that to happen…

              1. I’m sorry that Club Twitty posted this lie.

                Our own Barron X–no raging liberal, but imminently reasonable and in possession of incredible IP analyzing powers–noted in one comment:

                2. to post on my troll diary!  Thanks ‘Nancy’ that means so much to me.  I was hoping one of the chicken-shit trolls would rear their ugly head, and once again you deliver!

      2. Yeah, please do look into that.  ‘Twould not be cool if people can find others’ IP addresses.  It’s not the end of the world (IP addresses aren’t Social Security numbers), but people who post from, for instance, a work computer might not want their company associated with whatever they post here.

      3. I figured BarronX was just BSing everyone. The server can easily have that information but unless it’s embedded in the wb page here (it’s not – I just checked) I don’t see any way to get it.

        1. .

          This is the funniest thing I’ve read here in 2 1/2 years, or however long I’ve been here

          (under another name at first, then I couldn’t remember the password.)

          Middle of the Road,

          at first I thought that you were in on the joke.

          But unless your tongue is still in your cheek,

          then I owe you – and everyone – an apology.  

          I can barely turn my computer on.

          When I have trouble printing,

          rather than fix the problem myself,

          I go down the street to the public library and pay 10 cents a page.  

          Every 6 months I have a former employee come to my house and clean up the caches and stuff.

          Otherwise, I’m a computer illiterate.  

          I thought that folks who knew my posting also knew my limited abilities in the ether realm.

          It was a joke.  

          1. .

            I apologize to MOTR, and anyone else that didn’t know it was pure fabrication.

            Then again, if that lie affects trolls the way garlic affects vampires, maybe some good can come of it.  

            I’m sorry.

            Pols, please don’t pull the plug on me.  

            This is where I do most of my campaign appearances.

            Neither Lamborn nor Bidlack will appear on the same stage with me.

            .  

              1. I tried to suggest that the Barron was most likely pulling the wool over some troll eyes with my snarky comment that he was

                in possession of incredible IP analyzing powers

                but I should not have left it open to such mis-interpretation.  

                Thanks for the front page, Pols, I will try to keep the rumor-mongering to a minimum.

                1. Barron X is an operative of the National Security Agency.  He not only knows every IP in the country, if you so much as fart upwind, he’ll tell you what you had for breakfast!

                  😉

              2. .

                I apologize.

                Looking back, I can see how that would be very unsettling, and this is supposed to be a fun place.  

                I’m sorry that I took the fun out of posting here for you and others.  

                Of course, the server has that info, so the source of death threats or whatever could be traced, with a subpoena,

                but there’s no way that even a techie like Thielen or the many others who participate here could access that info without access granted by the site owner.  

                So go ahead and vent off your anger at me for my tasteless joke.  I deserve it,

                and I’ll never be able to uncover your identity, SXP 151.

                Or may I call you ISP 122.54.06.903 ?

                .

                .

                1. Not a big deal. I wasn’t freaked out by it, just a little surprised that anyone had that information. I just didn’t realize it was a joke.

                  The only reason I took it a little seriously is because Laughing Boy had made the same sort of joke a little earlier, threatening to post IP addresses of votes in one of his polls. (I’m not totally incompetent with computers, but I wouldn’t have known how easy or hard that was.)

                  1. You guys, you just have given Libertad the greatest actual opening (which I will now steal, rendering his next 100 posts invalid).

                    “Now you know how it feels to be afraid of someone knowing how you believe politically – THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT IS BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”

  5. We collected them back when I was at UF many, many years ago.

    I think that these astroturfed, trolling, sock puppets have been ingesting them.

  6. They will disappear after November 4th and authentic conservatives like Yokel and Laughing Boy will soldier on with honest conservative narratives.  Crazy perhaps but at least honest.

    2. but the out and out dishonesty is the worst part of it.  Blatant lies with the sole intent to derail any discussion and disrupt the forum.  It is weird that these people want to be paid to undermine open discussions.  I consider it spitting in the faces of our soldiers in Iraq who are fighting to allow others the right to peaceable assemble and rationally debate the issues of their times.

    1. I ran across him the other day. He’s so worried about Obama becoming president, I think he’s going to need to get on medication to relieve his anxiety.

    2. …they think coming to a place like this–populated by fairly smart, level-headed and well read people (for the most part) and spouting their talking points is really doing to convince anyone.  

      Not a lot of low-information voters hanging around at Colorado Pols…

        1. (not that I am encouraging them).  Maybe we can use this title for every thread and they’ll just pass over all of them.  They’re not the brightest bunch after all.

              1. shows her holding an air rifle.  It’s fearsome looking but its just a BB gun. Proof enough that the photo is a fake because the real Sarah would have had an M-16 at least.

            2. Not the nude likeness of Sarah the Moose Slayer, but the notion of the 68 year-old artist using his own daughter as the stand-in for Palin, presumably posing her naked.  I know incest is a family affair, but …

  9. So correct me if I am wrong.  

    Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (“outreach”, “awareness”, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. …Very often the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research.

    Isn’t this what the Liberal Left Wing has been doing to Sarah Palin since she was announced as the VP pick for the GOP?

    Hmmm, makes one wonder.

    Maybe this video also relates to your TROLL.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

    1. Yes, allow me to correct you.  

      The ‘Liberal Left Wing’ (redundancy in original) sees Palin for the disaster she is and doesn’t need an orchestrated campaign to expose her for that.  

      Nor are we collecting points offered on the Obama website. The Obama campaign is bright enough to not send its volunteers into the wingnutosphere to argue with the likes of you, knowing that the deluded who post on those blogs are too far gone, are part of the 30% 29% 28% that still think W is doing a heckuva job.

      Provide me a link, like I did for the diary, and show me the orchestration at the Obama campaign level and I’ll consider awarding you a troll point.  Otherwise…fail.

      The Pelosi link is a non-sequiter, and we all know that it was the 2/3 of House Republicans that voted down the bailout, that the RNC already had ads in the works blaming the bailout passage (whoops-bad timing) on the Dems, even as McCain was claiming credit for its passage…

      1. what newspaper she reads.  Jeez, when Katie Couric can stump you with a question that’s so damn easy, you don’t need the “Liberal Left Wing” to bring you down.  As Napolean said, “never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.”

          1. the ‘Liberal Left Wing’ (sic) is doing great at amplifying the nightmare that is Sarah unplugged, but it’s the McCain campaign that keeps stepping into it.  They have made our task much easier.  No orchestration needed!

        2. “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.”

          Joe Biden, apparently unaware that FDR wasn’t president when the stock market crashed in 1929 and that only experimental TV sets were in use at that time.

          and better yet another video for Joe.

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

            2. “The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred in our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”

              Or Maybe somebody should teach him how many states are in the USA.

              http://politicalhumor.about.co…

          2. Or Thinking Iraq shares a border with Pakistan.

            Or that Czechoslovakia still exists

            Or that Putin rules Germany.

            Those are just mistatemnts and I didn’t really hit McCain on those

            However, not knowing what you read is more like when McCain thinks

            Spain is a rogue nation.

            Or that Pakistan was a failed state when Musharaff perpetrated a coup against the democratically elected government.

            Those are just Bullshit answers to avoid answering a question that either has you confused or that you don’t want to answer.

            There is a big difference.

            She should have said, something like ‘I get my news from a lot of sources, mostly online, I read the Ankorage Daily News, the Wasila Frontiersman, a couple of energy trade journals and to stay up on national news through the Wall Street Journal and National Review.  I also enjoy the American Rifleman and find People a guilty pleasure’

            1. Imagine that John McCain named a young running

              mate to campaign with him, and this national

              rookie suggested America had 58 states, repeatedly

              used the wrong names for the cities he was visiting,

              and honored a Memorial Day crowd by acknowledging

              the “fallen heroes” who were present, somehow

              alive and standing in the audience. How long would

              it take for the national media to see another Dan

              Quayle caricature? Let’s raise the stakes. What if it

              was the GOP presidential candidate making these

              thoroughly ridiculous comments? This scenario is

              very real, except it isn’t McCain. It’s the other fellow.

              ABC reporter Jake Tapper follows politicians

              around for a living. On his blog, he suggested Barack

              Obama has a problem: “The man has been a oneman

              gaffe machine.”

              1. As I read Jack Tapper regularly and have never seen him write anything like what you list above.

                As to the 57 contests – there were 57 primaries as there are primaries in the territories, commonwealths, & overseas residents.

                2. As to the 57 contests – there were 57 primaries as there are primaries in the territories, commonwealths, & overseas residents.

                  No matter how you look at it, these still are not states.  Even my 8 year old knows this.

            2. which I’ve seen literally nobody, except a single other commenter on Daily Kos, mentioning.

              During the debate, McCain said he would veto every single spending bill. “And you will know their names,” yadda yadda yadda.

              Uh, the only bills Congress passes involve spending money. You have to spend money to do literally anything in government. McCain was threatening to drown government in the bathtub. Does he actually mean that? Probably not, but how did nobody notice his answer?

                1. Transcript of debate

                  As president of the United States, I want to assure you, I’ve got a pen. This one’s kind of old. I’ve got a pen, and I’m going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk. I will make them famous. You will know their names.

                  That may have been what McCain wanted to say, but it’s not at all what he said.

      2. I’ve followed this website for a couple of years and used to be of the opinion that ColoradoPols.com was not completely a total mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. I’ve avoided posting here to date as over the past several months it is apparent that anyone supporting/presenting a conservative/Republican position is rabidly “flamed” by the majority of the regulars on this site. This impression is reinforced by this thread…anyone posting in support of McCain/Palin is a “Troll”?!?

        So…please clarify for me…does ColoradoPols.com purport to be “neutral” or do the moderators of this website have a conscious objective to advance and promote the Democratic Party agenda and its candidates?

        1. As Sarah Palin states that they can say what they want but we know the truth behind the matter.  

          Heck, just look at the title of this Posting: Astro Turfing Colorado Pols

          This is what assists them in defending their own agendas.  

          Ye’ though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Democrats, I shall fear no Liberal.

        2. How can you say that anyone with dissenting opinions is unwelcome?

          Laughing Boy, NEWSMAN, Yokel, Haners, Barron X. All intelligent conservatives who disagree with us on many things, but they are embraced by this community. That is because they are real people, and they provide actual facts for their arguments.

          90% of the people who get bashed initially are not interested in having an intelligent conversation.

          And if you think anyone is neutral, you are being naive. Everyone has an agenda.

          1. I believe it is the point that if we do not see as you do we become Trolls.  

            Which in return is really unnecessary because we are all entitled to our opinions and you don’t see most of us being derogatory towards you as an individual.

            My first post as soon as I had a conservative view I immediately became a troll.  I just wish you all could do your homework.

            1. .

              To gain respect here, you’ll have to post on more than one topic, and when challenged, back up unsupported assertions.

              This is a left-leaning forum, and I haven’t yet persuaded a single member over to my way of thinking on abortion or gay marriage.  

              But in so many other areas, there’s a lot of room for give and take.  And, for those open to it, learning.  

              .

              1. This is a left-leaning forum, and I haven’t yet persuaded a single member over to my way of thinking on abortion or gay marriage.

                I don’t really look at them as left leaning, I believe that they are Closet-Republicans because the “Troll in them is afraid to speak out and say what they know is correct, but behind closed doors, where nobody can speak out against them, they know what is best for this country.  They will never admit to it though, due to not appearing to be popular because their parents will not allow them to be anything that daddy says they can not do.

                Most of them are probably Denver Bronco (3-1)Fans until they lost to Kansas City (1-3) and are now scrambling for a more pupular team until the Broncos can pull themselves back out of this shameful embarrassment.

                I say to them, Grow A Set, and Stand Up for what is best for this country and put America First instead of their own special interests.

                    1. that a bit earlier he was complaining that he was being unfairly called a troll, then he posted this:

                      I don’t really look at them as left leaning, I believe that they are Closet-Republicans because the “Troll in them is afraid to speak out and say what they know is correct, but behind closed doors, where nobody can speak out against them, they know what is best for this country.  They will never admit to it though, due to not appearing to be popular because their parents will not allow them to be anything that daddy says they can not do.

                      …I say to them, Grow A Set, and Stand Up for what is best for this country and put America First instead of their own special interests.

                      KStrait, if you even wonder what a troll post looks like, I suggest that you bookmark your post then you can refer to it.

                      Typical Troll-post formulation:

                      Insult, insult, insult, mindless talking point pablum.

                    2. Show me where you bring nothing but mindless talk CT.  I have posted many “proofs” to your standard and still see nothing from you other than troll this and troll that.  Come on CT, time to come out of the closet and admit to the American people what you really support, and then prove it.

                    4. Is that an upgrade from troll?

                      You have many opinions about others but you can not accept the possibility that others have opinions of their own.  To call a person a troll because they do not meet your own political beliefs is just jargon and this, of all things makes you the troll that can’t face the reality that each of us as individuals have the Right to disagree.  

                      Call me as you must but in the end you will see.  Whether B.O. becomes president or not, his true colors will shine through.  

                      The welfare system will be reinstated, health care will be governed by a politician instead of a bureaucrat, Labor Unions will control whether you can take time off to care for a loved one, …etc.

                      Connect the dots here CT. and you will see this great country become what it is not.  Instead of USSR we will be known as USSA.

                    5. Read into the statement.  It was not a bash towards the Broncos but towards the ones that can not support their team because people might not support them and their team.  

                      Not all Coloradans are Bronco Fans!

                      Look past the monolith Z.

        3. If more tree hugging liberals post comments on Colorado Pols than conservatives does that make it an evil cesspool of liberalism or are conservatives prone to play the victim card whenever they venture out into the real world where they encounter seething anger on the mismanagement of our economy and our country?

          I vote for the latter.  Conservatives when confronted with liberal biased reality always play the victim card.  In the old days they would think of it as their missionary duty to convince the unwashed that deregulation and tax cuts are the right way to run government.  With their entire ideological philosophy in shredded tatters all they can do is complain that this website or that is biased.  My answer is “So What”.

          The difference between turds who show up to disrupt the forum and authentic conservatives with a legitimate point of view are obvious to everyone who comes to Colorado Pols everyday to play pundit.  Good writers can write thoughtful pieces even in a hostile environment.  Colorado Pols doesn’t ban idiots so I don’t know how you can accuse them of being in the tank for Democrats and again so what if they are.  You can always find plenty of conservative website to vent on so if you don’t like the website go away and find someplace else to write your prose.

          2. I’ve noticed that commenters at a place usually tend to have the opposite political orientation of the site, at least when comments aren’t moderated.

            Look at the comments section of the Boulder Daily Camera, for example, compared to that of the Colorado Springs Gazette. A lot of conservatives at the former and liberals at the latter.

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