You're simple, vapid, and shallow. Are we having a dialog yet?>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Here's a quick quiz... Two activist groups are accused of being "astroturf". One is the Tea Party - which is accused of being a bought & paid for astroturf campaign of the right. The other is Occupy Wall Street - which is accused of being a bought & paid for astroturf campaign of the left.
Occupy Wall Street is guilty of documented cases of arson, assault, drug use, drug dealing, fraud, murder, public disturbance, rape, sexual assault, sedition, suicide, theft, vandalism, property destruction, bigotry, police harassment, and various other felonies and misdemeanors. The Tea Party is guilty of ZERO documented cases of any crime. Sounds like OWS is far more similar to the Taliban than the Tea Party.
The simple fact is that neolibs want a bad guy to demonize. Neolibs and leftists in general are simple, shallow, and vapid - very much like Sorkin and his on-air wet dream that he calls a 'show'. To these narrow-minded creatures, it is unacceptable to see honest, well-intentioned, reasonable everyday citizens opposing their radical agenda items. The Tea Party as a whole has been inoffensive and has as simple, basic message: cut spending. They aren't racists, or violent. They aren't anything close to the Taliban. But truth and reality don't matter to blinkered neolibs who NEED... who desperately CRAVE a man in a cloak with a twirling moustache to hate...
Can't these 20 million disenfranchised voters just pay 10 bucks or so to go get a photo ID that would allow them to vote?
That's not the point. A large portion of the so-called 'disenfranchised' are illegal aliens who should not be allowed to vote. Voter ID laws prevent illegal aliens from voting. Such a simple, common-sense law cannot be allowed by the liberal left as they'd lose out on literally millions of illegal alien votes. Protesting voter ID laws has nothing to do with "disenfranchisement". It has everything to do with preventing illegal voting activity - which all civilized nations do rigorously. I have to have a voter ID card to vote, and display an ID. It in no way disenfranchises ANYONE except those who shouldn't be voting in the first place. Everyone who should legally be allowed to vote already has all the ID that any ID law requires.

Here's a quick quiz... Two activist groups are accused of being "astroturf". One is the Tea Party - which is accused of being a bought & paid for astroturf campaign of the right. The other is Occupy Wall Street - which is accused of being a bought & paid for astroturf campaign of the left.

Occupy Wall Street is guilty of documented cases of arson, assault, drug use, drug dealing, fraud, murder, public disturbance, rape, sexual assault, sedition, suicide, theft, vandalism, property destruction, bigotry, police harassment, and various other felonies and misdemeanors. The Tea Party is guilty of ZERO documented cases of any crime. Sounds like OWS is far more similar to the Taliban than the Tea Party.

The simple fact is that neolibs want a bad guy to demonize. Neolibs and leftists in general are simple, shallow, and vapid - very much like Sorkin and his on-air wet dream that he calls a 'show'. To these narrow-minded creatures, it is unacceptable to see honest, well-intentioned, reasonable everyday citizens opposing their radical agenda items. The Tea Party as a whole has been inoffensive and has as simple, basic message: cut spending. They aren't racists, or violent. They aren't anything close to the Taliban. But truth and reality don't matter to blinkered neolibs who NEED... who desperately CRAVE a man in a cloak with a twirling moustache to hate...

Can't these 20 million disenfranchised voters just pay 10 bucks or so to go get a photo ID that would allow them to vote?

That's not the point. A large portion of the so-called 'disenfranchised' are illegal aliens who should not be allowed to vote. Voter ID laws prevent illegal aliens from voting. Such a simple, common-sense law cannot be allowed by the liberal left as they'd lose out on literally millions of illegal alien votes. Protesting voter ID laws has nothing to do with "disenfranchisement". It has everything to do with preventing illegal voting activity - which all civilized nations do rigorously. I have to have a voter ID card to vote, and display an ID. It in no way disenfranchises ANYONE except those who shouldn't be voting in the first place. Everyone who should legally be allowed to vote already has all the ID that any ID law requires.

Blizzard has this marketing/astroturfing thing nailed. They've moved insane numbers of some of the shittiest games ever made while some of the best games of all time do fractions of the business, all because of a large base of clueless rabid fanboys.

100% astroturf. Unions have faked, bought, and lied their way to this total using national organizations. It is not a 'Wisconsin' result. This is the unions doing everything they can to try and save thier own butts because they know if Walker's policies work they are screwed - maybe for generations.

Color me unimpressed that the unholy union of SEIU, WEAC, the Democrat party and all the standard roster of leftists have managed to conjure up some signatures. Yawn. Their problem really is in an entirely different arena.

Their problem is that Walker's policies are WORKING...

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_1_scott-walker.html

"71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that the state’s public schools have either stayed the same or improved over the previous half-year. More than three-quarters of Wisconsinites expect the state’s economy either to get better or to stay the same in the next year, up from 60 percent during the height of the union tumult in March."

There's only so much that union bought astroturf can accomplished in the light of facts and reality.

What WPP does is try and increase doubt to a level that becomes a passive ad hominem attack.

Nope - I view the story from as many angles as possible, come to a conclusion, and then state my perspective from a position of informed certitude. I know this infuriates prog-libs, but I make no apologies for it.

Then that would clearly discredit all the protests worldwide

No - it would not discredit OWS. However, it would supply evidence that Mrs. McProtester was the kind of person Fox News said she was.

Who gives a &&&& what this woman is doing?

Her family, perhaps? A parent has responsibilities and obligations beyond their own selfish whims. If a person ditches thier responsibility without the family's explicit leave then others are not out of place for saying she lacks character. What is needed is more information - specifically the husband's side of the story. What cursory evidence we have seems to suggest that she left for OWS and her family was not exactly cool with it (IE reports that her husband is 'puzzled'). But without more data nothing definitive can be said.

The paragraphs you have dedicated to this non-story show that you are exactly the type of drone these $$$holes are trying to stir up in the first place.

I've observed OWS and reached a reasoned conclusion that they're a bunch of prog-lib dupes and union astroturf who are mad at the wrong people. They have no plan, and many of them are attempting to agitate anger, resentment, and (in some cases) violence. I put it to you that it is more accurate to say that YOU are exactly the kind of drone that OWS is trying to stir up.

You are worrying about &&&& that doesn't matter, you have no idea what you are talking about, and it's none of your business anyway. She is one of thousands sacrificing who-knows-what to be there and support OWS. She is there doing what she believes in.

Family solidarity and fidelity matters. I know exactly what I'm talking about. Her true character is as yet undetermined. I live what I believe in every day.

The story isn't about how this mother did or did not coordinate going to the protest with her family but how the media is exploiting one person and her family to push their agenda... just like they always do except it's really really blatantly obvious now.

I think that prog-libs are seeing things that don't exist with this crazy 'push their agenda' foolishness. This is Fox & Friends. It's a morning 'chatting idiots' show like Good Morning America. Look - just because someone on TV says something that is not flush with YOUR political perspective does not mean there is some sinister master agenda that seeks to undermine you.

There are multiple media studies that show the news media - as a whole - is far more slanted left than it is right - and that even FOX news isn't anywhere near as 'right wing' as prog-libs think it is. But even I don't think there the leftist slant is some 'agenda' the news media has. I think that the news media is simply populated by prog-libs who pick stories and portray them from a left-wing bias because that's how they think things are.

When a prob-lib journalist sees a bunch of prog-lib OWS protesters, they feel sympathy for them and report accordingly. When they see a bunch of conservative Tea-Party protestors, they despise them and report accordingly. And that's exactly how it all went down. The media mostly treats OWS with kid gloves and slobbers all over them because leftist like them. But the Tea Party was 'conservative', and so it got no such softshoe treatment. The TP has been entirely peaceful. Not one cop has been injured. Not once have they had to be tear gassed, or 'evicted', or otherwise cause trouble. But to the media they were a bunch of dangerous, evil, racist, thugs. But that isn't the media's 'agenda'. It is a result of thier perception bias.

For example - let's say you are a typical prog-lib. Compared to the national 'average', a prog-lib is way left of center. If we use a 100 point scale where 1 means "liberal" and 100 means "conservative" then a prog-lib is way down in the teens or twenties. So they see the world from that perspective, and their friend do too. So when they encounter an opinion that is actually "moderate" (say 50 on the scale) they see it as "right-wing" because it is so far to the right of themselves.

When you occupy a far-left opinion, pretty much ANYTHING you encounter other than similarly far-left opinions appears to be radical "neo-con" right-wing extremism. In reality, that is totally untrue, and most of the stuff they see as 'right-wing' is actually centrist. So when Fox & Friends expresses the rather centrist opinion that a woman who abandons her family is a bad person, prog-lib hackles go up because the woman is a fellow prog-lib and such a moralization is clearly some sort of 'right wing' agenda seeking to undermine the OWS group you empathize with.

I was always under the impression that the Tea Party was a group of individuals who don't know anything about history, don't understand how taxes work or that a society exists specifically to help the people in it, and are utterly terrified of Barack Obama

That impression is a left-wing media construction that you would do well to disabuse yourself of immediately. "The TP is nothing but a bunch of angry, white racists" has been a meme of the left for over 2 years. The facts are diametrically opposed. The TP is composed of all bands of citizens, and thier message is simple. Vote for people - whoever they are - that will reduce government, balance the budget, and return the US to a path of fiscal responsibility. That's it.

Also, winston, i will be very surprised if you have met "most" of the people who agree with Occupy Everywhere. I will be even more surprised to find out that you haven't but you're going around stating that "they are mostly college students who favour leftist causes."

I watch the videos of the US OWS movement across a gamut of places. I've seen them post thier own vids. I've seen the videos that love them such as those on KOS, Underground, Huffington, et al. I've seen ones that makes fun of them on late night TV, daytime talk, and so forth. I've seen others that definitely dislike them such as on Brietbart, Newsbusters, et al. I've seen fawning stuff on national news, and other stuff more even-handed on Drudge. Of course I haven't met 'most' of them. I never claimed to. But I've seen enough of them to accurately get the feel of who they are and what they are. Regardless, see the link above that I already referenced. It simply repeats what I already knew to be the case by my own observations. All I do is repeat the facts. Don't like it? Prove you've got a better source....

Wikipedia...only source I'm going to dignify you with...

Aaaand - an epic fail...

The truth is that OWS is - for the most part - a clot of young, left-wingers. Sure there is a mix of 'other' in there too (as well as a lot of union astroturf, and other political hangers-on) but the backbone of the movement is leftist college kids. You don't have to like it, but that's just how it is. There's nothing 'wrong' with that per se. Not sure why you're so defensive about it. But it is conclusively true that OWS is not composed of a demographic representative of the U.S. public at large.

What do they want?

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

There you go.

9/9/9 plan … followers are too stupid to realize he's talking about raising taxes.

No – his plan is a staged plan moving towards a fair tax with 9/9/9 as a starting point. Everyone is aware of what it is because it clear, simple, and down on paper. This is in stark contrast to Democrats who want to raise taxes on the middle class but are saying they only want to tax 'millionaires and billionaires’ as with the Obama tax scheme that he calls a ‘jobs bill’.

starting today, the media will go back to ignoring them, on the grounds that now they're just a front for Unions and Democratic political organizations. In other words, at the first signs that this protest might align with a broader liberal agenda, they'll go back to dismissing them

This is just one of those areas where you are going to have to admit you are completely off target Net. The presence of union & other radical leftists REINFORCES the image of these whackos in the minds of the media. You said the media would ignore the protestors 'starting today'. This morning on the news I saw no fewer than FIVE different stories on three networks about the protests ‘ratcheting up’, ‘spreading’, et al. The media coverage isn’t decreasing. It is increasing.

There is no secret about why this is the case. It is because the majority of the media is dominated by leftist sympathizers, and so they naturally gravitate towards these other leftists. For the media, the ‘occupiers’ are a romantic throwback to their own liberal college days. They love these schmucks.

Consider how they treat them. In almost every story the occupiers are given actual SERIOUS consideration. The reporters do not challenge them or their ideas. The reporters slant the stories so that the protestors are shown in a sympathetic light. The media hides away their crazy signs, their lunatic fringes, their violent chants, their anti-american Marxist speakers, their illegal street and sidewalk blockings, and all the other bad things they do or say. But they broadcast ad-nauseum the vids of the cops arresting them as they wail and cry about how they are ‘peaceful’… There are puff peice stories about them needing blankets, and food. Boo hoo hoo.

Now think back again and recall how the very same media treats the Tea Party. From the beginning, the media has tagged the Tea Party as astroturf, racist, hate-fuelled, radical, fringe purveyors of violence. They’ve gone out of their way to paint the Tea Partiers as crazy, evil dupes of the vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Interviews with TP members routinely come from a position of antagonism or outright hostility. Media goes out of their way to find ignore huge crowds of rational, everyday normal folks and thier simple message of fiscal responsibility. But if there's ONE bozo at a rally acting like an @$$hole with a "Obama is Hitler" sign then the media will devote whole news segments to that guy and try to make it look like he is the rule rather than the exception.

Two different protest groups. Two completely different styles of media treatment. And all because the news media is dominated by an east-coast knee-jerk position of leftist philosophy. They say they are unbiased - but talk is cheap. When talk ISN'T cheap, they prove they are biased. Almost 90% of all news media donations to political candidates in 2008 were to Democrats. When was the last time you were in ANY population that was so lopsided? In any normal population, you'll have like 40% GOP, 40% Democrat, and 20% 'other'. The news media is so slanted to the left that it is hard to find any other group quite as radically lopsided and not officially a 'cult'.

As far as Cain goes - he's 100% right. These bozos are attacking the wrong target. If you want to succeed in life you don't go about it by blaming others. You do it by rolling up your sleeves and going to work. The bulk of these protesters are lily-white college doofuses who have never had a real job. Maybe they should try it before they go hatin' on it.

Sorry Net – but you’re wrong on this and today’s media treatment alone proves it.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Now now, I believe there are many lefty voices who STILL accuse the Tea party of being Fox/Murdoch-sponsored.
Say what you will about Cain, but he's right on this: what do these people want? What do they want to achieve?
Sorry to poop in the punch bowl, but if you take any of these hippies and swap them with the guys in the skyscraper, they'll act exactly the same way and do the same exact things as the originals.

>> ^Sagemind:
This idiot thinks these protesters are organized as a scheme by a political party? - These protesters are a spontaneous uprising. They aren't uprising because they are jealous, they are protesting because they and the public were and are being shafted over and over by the elite wealthy without concern for those they step on.



To clarify, I'm one of those people on the left who knows that the "Tea Party" protests have been happening for years -- a lot longer than Obama's been President anyways.

What was fake was their explosion post-2009. All of a sudden, the big GOP money groups and media outlets pimped and fluffed the movement, and changed it from a movement largely centered on a Ron Paul-style platform, to a totally straight down the line GOP platform, social issues and all.

What I was mad about was that the media only "discovered" them after they'd been turned into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party, and continued to insist they were some sort of brand new, spontaneous, authentic movement, long past the point where it was super obvious that they were astroturf.

Now here's my prediction about the Occupy Wall Street group -- starting today, the media will go back to ignoring them, on the grounds that now they're just a front for Unions and Democratic political organizations. In other words, at the first signs that this protest might align with a broader liberal agenda, they'll go back to dismissing them, either for being astroturf, or simply because they look like dirty fucking hippies.

And yes, this is one of those predictions I hope I'm wrong about, but I kinda doubt it.

I'm skeptical too, boise. This may be legit, but it may also be another astroturf venture designed to manufacture consent for some yet to be revealed agenda. It's hard to trust anyone in politics these days, and keeping your finances secret is not a good sign - you gotta figure the Citizens United ruling was part of some larger plan. Also, one of confirmed funders, Arno Political Consultants, has a track record of election fraud.

Arno Political Consultants Controversies (from wiki).

In 2004, APC hired JSM who hired YPM who is accused of tricking people into registering to vote as a Republican.[2]

In 2004, APC is accused of forging signatures on a petition to legalize slot machines in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.[5]

In 2005, APC has come under fire for allegedly fraudulent ballot petitioning strategies, particularly pertaining to a Massachusetts anti-gay marriage proposal as put forth by the Massachusetts Family Institute.[6][7]

In 2007, APC hired JSM, Inc. who hired independent contractors who gave snacks and food to homeless people in exchange for signing petitions and registering to vote.[8]

In 2009, proponents of a payday loan veto referendum sued APC in Franklin County for breach of contract and negligence. 13,000 signatures were thrown out because the Form 15's had not been appropriately filled out. They were seeking $438,000. [9] Both parties reached an undisclosed settlement agreement on July 29th, 2009.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Political_Consultants

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_Elect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Political_Consultants

Do not be fooled by this corporate-funded PR exercise.

This is bald partisan malarkey... which figures, because The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank co-founded by Charles Koch, chairman of the board and CEO of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the second largest privately held company (after Cargill) by revenue in the USA -- responsible for the "Americans for Prosperity" behind most of the "astroturf" Tea Party and much of the "Covert Operations' that are being waged against the Obama administration.

Hey ghandi, remember me, the crazy guy with the crazy idea? I switched majors to biology but I keep on keeping on with the dreaming. Chemistry is a lot more interesting than a state university's current idea of computer science. My wait-and-see attitude, coupled with my tendency to only do things i enjoy, lets me stick to projects where I can make personally satisfactory progress. Other people will have to complete the LDP as I sort of always knew.

Check these out regarding logical discourse:

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"This seems like the perfect question to pose to Slashdotters: how would you foster more dynamic spaces for online news discussion? How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls? " Sound familiar?

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/05/09/203221/Ask-Slashdot-Going-Beyond-Comment-Threads

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Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. With our images and statistics, you can help identify misuse of Twitter. Our first application was the study of astroturf campaigns in elections. Now we're extending our focus to the diffusion of all types of information in social media.

http://truthy.indiana.edu


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United States Patent 7,805,291 Berkowitz Appl. No.: 11/137,594
Filed: May 25, 2005
September 28, 2010

Method of identifying topic of text using nouns


Abstract
A method of identifying a topic of a text. Text is received. Then, the nouns in the text are identified. The singular form of each identified noun is determined. Combinations are created of the singular form of the identified nouns, where the number of singular forms of the nouns in the combinations is user-definable. The frequency of occurrence in the text of each noun that corresponds to its singular form is determined. Each frequency of occurrence is assigned as a score to its corresponding singular form noun. Each combination of singular form nouns is assigned a score that is equal to the sum of the scores of its constituent singular form nouns. The user-definable number of top scoring singular form nouns and combinations of singular form nouns are selected as the topic of the text.

Inventors: Berkowitz; Sidney (Baltimore, MD)
Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Director National Security Agency (Washington, DC)
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This paper was coming out about the time I started to get interested in the possibility of analyzing for semantics and stuff. Good thing someone smarter figured it out.

Modeling public mood and emotion: Twitter sentiment and socio-economic phenomena
Authors: Johan Bollen, Alberto Pepe, Huina Mao
(Submitted on 9 Nov 2009)

Abstract: Microblogging is a form of online communication by which users broadcast brief text updates, also known as tweets, to the public or a selected circle of contacts. A variegated mosaic of microblogging uses has emerged since the launch of Twitter in 2006: daily chatter, conversation, information sharing, and news commentary, among others. Regardless of their content and intended use, tweets often convey pertinent information about their author's mood status. As such, tweets can be regarded as temporally-authentic microscopic instantiations of public mood state. In this article, we perform a sentiment analysis of all public tweets broadcasted by Twitter users between August 1 and December 20, 2008. For every day in the timeline, we extract six dimensions of mood (tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, confusion) using an extended version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS), a well-established psychometric instrument. We compare our results to fluctuations recorded by stock market and crude oil price indices and major events in media and popular culture, such as the U.S. Presidential Election of November 4, 2008 and Thanksgiving Day. We find that events in the social, political, cultural and economic sphere do have a significant, immediate and highly specific effect on the various dimensions of public mood. We speculate that large scale analyses of mood can provide a solid platform to model collective emotive trends in terms of their predictive value with regards to existing social as well as economic indicators.


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Cheers,

Vairetube

No astroturfing. *discard

The Teaparty is astroturfing --- ie. fake grassroots funded by .. ta da, rich white people

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement_funding
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html

Its smoke and mirrors to distract. Its nothing. There is no spoon.

Too damn bad that these corporate-backed astroturf movements have co-opted the rhetoric of 'working class' while us in the Left have been completely silent

The NAACP did not call the entire tea party racist.

This is the same kind of thing where Obama says his health care plan will not have "death panels" and yet at then in a few weeks he recess appoints a guy to be in charge of rationing health care. I will dissassemble the weasel-speak of the NAACP, if I may...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/16/tea.party.resolution/

Instead of joining us to repudiate racism, Tea Party leaders have attempted a tit for tat and demanded that we condemn the New Black Panther Party for reported hate speech.

This statement implies that the Tea Party has not repudiated racism. This is a blatant falsehood. When racism shows up, the national movement has condemned it. They do so repeatedly.

http://thenationalteapartyfederation.com/press_room.html

"The Federation does not and will not tolerate any form of racism, violence or hate speech... We believe to our core that racism and hate speech have no place in civil political discourse and debate..."

So Jealous & the NAACP are full of crap. The Tea Party does condemn racism. That doesn't stop left wing astroturf from showing up to promulgate it, nor does it stop racist hanger-ons who just show up. But the accusation that the Tea Party does not reject racism is patently false.

"And the New Black Panther Party is not a member of the NAACP. What we are asking the Tea Party to eschew is not the racism of some outside organization, but the bigotry within."

So - because the NBP aren't members of the NAACP means that their racism is OK and not worth condeming? A lot of the people who are accused of being racists aren't members of the Tea party officially (show me the proof) - so by his logic that makes them OK, right? This is a hypocritical double-standard of the worst kind and for the NAACP to make this argument makes them the lowest form of race hucksters.

With increased influence comes increased responsibility

Physician - heal thyself.

In fact her response has been to claim there are no racist elements in the tea party.

in the first place, Palin isn't a representative of the Tea Party as far as I am aware. She agrees with their positions, but is not a spokesperson. Second, she's right. The OFFICIAL position of the Tea Party - their mission statements and their objectives - have absolutely no racist element to them whatsoever. Period. End of story. As shown above - their official position is to condemn racism and racists.

What is happening here is the NAACP & left wing kooks are using the actions of a small fraction of extremist hanger-ons to try and condemn a larger movement. It is disingenous, false, and slimy. To use such tactics makes THEM the racists - not the tea party - because they are deliberately (and falsely) using race to advance their cause. The tea party does not do this, which is why they make the charges of reverse racism at the NAACP. And the charge has merit because the NAACP is the one running around looking at the world through race colored lenses.