Say It Isn’t So … Obama Administration Behind an Astro-Turfing Anti-Tea Party Web Site … NEVAH! Aruba Tried Same Thing with Aruba the Truth with Natalee Holloway

Some times stories so different in content; however, are so close in their nature. Thus is the case with the following one regarding possible astro-turf anti-Tea Party site and the Natalee Holloway Aruba the Truth site.

Say it isn’t so Joe, or should I say Erick …

Erick Erickson of RED STATE is surmising that the anti-Tea Party web site The Other95, which defends the government from tea party criticisms and attacks the tea party movement as fringe, is an astro-turf product of the Obama Administration .  Red State asks the obvious question, when was the last time that a grass roots activists movement actually took the time to defend the government? Seems like a rather appropriate question to ask.

Writing on January 15, 2010, Glenn Greenwald at Salon noted Barack Obama’s new head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, had championed creating fake websites and using outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to act as alleged independent champions of government policy and to “cognitively infiltrate” opposition websites, etc.

In other words, Cass Sunstein has favored the government using outside parties as government propaganda agents to paint their opposition as fringe and undermine their credibility. Kind of like what has been happening with the tea party movement – lots of SEIU members pretending to be tea party activists causing violence in front of TV cameras.

For those that followed this site during the height of the Natalee Holloway disappearance in Aruba, this is exactly what they Aruba officials and AHATA, the hotel and tourism folks did in creating Aruba the Truth, a pseudo info web site used to combat Scared Monkeys and other sites with pro-Aruba government propaganda to lessen the blow of the impact negative and truthful news had on their tourism. What we at SM could never understand was some of our fellow blogger’s dismissive attitude, who we respect immensely, toward the story. They never fully understood the overall impact because they were never privy to the behind the scenes antics, corruption and conspiracies and because they only looked at the case with tunnel vision.  They never realized that a blog by helping a family of a missing person was taking on the full force of Aruba.  Needless to say, they failed in their efforts to distort the news and their efforts to bring down a site that was at the forefront of opposition against what Aruba was trying to accomplish. To this day Natalee may have not been found, but that does not mean that SM is still not a thorn in the side of those that tried to bring it down.

Moe Lane makes the very point toward the LEFT and the need for such a web site that Scared Monkeys made back in 2005 when battling the Aruba officials and Hotel tourism folks with regards to truthful reporting  … they have all this money and power and at the apex of coverage of the disappearance of Natalee Holloway could have gone on any TV news show they want, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Court TV, Americas Most Wanted, ABC, CBS, ABC and interview with any and every newspaper or magazine.  Every cable outlet had every one of their shows covering the story and yet still Aruba felt the need to create an astro-turf site to combat little old us. Moe Lane stated the following that rings so familiar …

I am struck with an errant thought: this must be exquisitely frustrating for professional Lefty operatives.  They have almost everything that they need.  They have a solid majority in both Houses of Congress; an Executive branch run by a Democrat and which contains all sorts of people willing to quietly do them favors; a media that largely takes their claims at face value; a plethora of funding; and even a broad outline of goals.  They have all these things, but they lack one thing – one thing – and that’s actual warm bodies.  They can’t even fill a coffee house reliably, let alone a field.

Also, I guess it is just a coincidence that the designer is affiliated with MoveOn.org and other leftwing sites and causes. The LEFT would never create an astro-turf site, never I say. Come on, that is what they (Nancy Pelosi) have claimed the GOP did with the Tea Party. You mean the LEFT actually accuses others of what they do themselves? Go figure.

Astroturf is the act of professional interest groups designing campaigns that appear to be grassroots efforts, but are not. It is what the left has accused the tea parties of being. Only more and more it looks like the anti-tea party movement is truly astroturfing.

Some have no shame … they will fail too.

It’s a play right out of Lenin’s handbook, forget Alinsky, to call the authentic “inauthentic” and then create something inauthentic demanding it be called “authentic.”