WARNING: Fake Liberal Blog Posts

[pnwmom]

Raw Story carried this interesting story (see below.)

I wonder how much of a problem this is, here in DU.

We have an important election coming up and we need every Democratic candidate to win, in both the House and the Senate. Period. Wherever this candidate is on the Democratic spectrum -- we need them all. Every single seat we get puts us closer to getting control of either or both Houses of Congress and that's the only way we will be able to put the brakes on this runaway train that is the Bush administration.

When you see someone on DU advocating that, in the November election, we withhold our votes from ANY Democrat -- out of "principle," -- be very cautious. You don't know anything about the blogger's real motivation, no matter how many posts s/he has had.

Not voting won't "send a message." Not voting won't "teach them a lesson." All it will do is show that progressives don't bother to vote. It will decrease our influence, not increase it. And voting for a third party, under the rules we have now, is just throwing your vote away.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/GOP_aide_busted_for_fake_blog_0925.html

"Liberal bloggers in New Hampshire busted an aide to Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) who was posing as a liberal blogger on such blogs as Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive and others. Bass’ office admitted culpability to HOH and said the staffer would be “appropriately disciplined.”

The unnamed aide to Bass — who, like many others in his party, faces a tough re-election fight — was routinely trolling liberal New Hampshire political blogs calling himself “IndyNH” and more commonly IndieNH, pretending to be a progressive.

SNIP

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. I don't think they're all fake

I think most of them are genuinely fed-up Democrats, and they're mostly not talking about not voting but about voting third party.

Rather than condemn them, the party needs to do something besides having "centrists" post insults.

[pnwmom]

5. I didn't say they were all fake. I said to be cautious.

Some of them ARE Green party members, however, and it is against DU rules to advocate here for a third party candidate in a race with a Democrat.

[babylonsister]

2. Kean, Jr's campaign is doing it also:

Kean campaign may have posted as "ex-Dems" on liberal site

The Internet postings came from people calling themselves “cleanupnj,” “usedtobeblue” and “AmadeusNJ.” They said they were concerned Democrats, “lifelong liberals,” and they were troubled by the United States senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez.

Mr. Menendez, they said, was up to no good. For instance, did you notice that a Congressional lawyer who Mr. Menendez said cleared him of ethics issues regarding a controversial real estate deal died last year? Wasn’t there something fishy about that?

But the liberal Democratic hosts of BlueJersey.com, the Web log where such comments were posted, smelled something fishy about the postings, and said they traced them to a computer inside the campaign headquarters of Mr. Menendez’s Republican opponent, Thomas H. Kean Jr.

They suspect the person behind the postings, which have appeared on the site regularly since July, is Mr. Kean’s campaign spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker. Ms. Hazelbaker called the accusations “nonsense,” and said neither she nor anyone else she knows of in the office had anything to do with the postings. “I’ve never e-mailed them nor posted on the Web site,” she said on Wednesday. “It’s a blog. You can’t believe what’s posted on blogs.” She declined to make Mr. Kean available to discuss the matter."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/nyregion/21blog.html?...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Clear sign of a rightwing troll:

"I'm a lifelong liberal, but I think the current Democrats are too far left." Or some such.

[pnwmom]

6. Yeah, that would be pretty suspicious.

But I've never seen a post like that. Have you really?

[babylonsister]

7. I've heard these trolls on CSPAN, and apparently they

clog liberal talk shows, too.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Not on DU, but in Letters to the Editor in various publications

"I'm a lifelong Democrat, but I think George W. Bush is doing a great job, and I'm tired of the Democrat Party always criticizing him."

That sort of thing.

[pnwmom]

9. Can you imagine what would happen if someone posted that here?

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Massive use of alert buttons, I'm sure

:-)

[Crunchy Frog]

12. They would be tombstoned immediately.

It's the ones pretending to be uberleftists who cause the most trouble, and who get away with it.

[pnwmom]

14. I'm afraid you're probably correct.

That would be a much more successful tactic around here.

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. Republicans fund Greens who will attack Democrats

Dirty tricks are dirty tricks. If Republicans want to engage in dirty tricks they will attack a Democrat from either side of the spectrum, whichever is most effective in the case at hand. The Dem is too Liberal, the Dem is too Conservative; once you are willing to make up lies it makes no difference what lies are being made up. The point is to peel away votes from that Democrats base. A vote peeled off a Democrat from the left is just as useful to Republicans as a vote peeled off a Democrat from the right.

Of course there will always be Democrats who legitimately anger other Democrats by being too conservative or too liberal for their tastes. If that wasn't true than the dirty tricks would never work. They only work when Republicans can mimic and distort viewpoints that legitimately exist among some voters, otherwise Republicans would stick out like sore thumbs every time they resorted to that type of trolling.

[pnwmom]

13. You're right. Republicans have funded Greens in a number of races.

I wonder if that's happened here in Washington. If the Greens were actually serious about winning (and not just peeling votes away from Democrats), you'd think they'd have picked a candidate better than the one they're putting up against Cantwell -- with his criminal history (including embezzlement and check fraud), record of not paying child support, etc.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0614/geov-parrish.php

Eighteen criminal charges in the past 17 years, most (but not all) for traffic violations and unpaid traffic fines. Massive debts from dozens of unpaid fines in both Seattle Municipal Court and King County District Court. A number are for driving without insurance. (And yes, he can afford it; in 2004, the last year for which records are available, Pope found that Dixon's nonprofit Central House paid him nearly $60,000 in salary and expenses.)
Dixon claims on his Web site that the woman he lives with (and who was until recently his campaign media contact) is his wife. But she isn't, and she'd better not be. He's still in the process of divorcing his actual wife.He owes thousands of dollars in unpaid child support to yet another ex.

In response, Dixon's people refer everyone to a statement by Dixon on his Web site. It basically denies and then verifies each finding. On traffic fines: "As a single father of three at the time of the citations, I was not able to keep track of my fines. I am now rectifying this situation." His latest "marriage" was an exchange of vows, but not legal. The child support debts were really day-care costs added to his child support, and "I have been making payments towards that debt." These personal attacks were made by "Democratic Party supporters," when in fact Pope, who unearthed the court records, is a Republican.

SNIP

People get curious. Personal character matters to voters. None of this has the slightest thing to do with Dixon's remarkable achievements as a community activist over the past 40 years. He is hardly the first community activist whose personal life is messy. It happens.

But in election campaigns, image is king. Dixon should have known to take care of these little messes before running for statewide office, but perhaps he did not. So what the hell was the Green Party thinking?

[Nozebro]

3. 9/11 Forum is one place.

"I wonder how much of a problem this is, here in DU."

[AtomicKitten]

15. I have no doubt in my mind.

and then there are those that mimic the same M.O. but with a different agenda.