Wednesday April 14, 2010

FYI. You probably already had some idea of this:

A growing number of conservative groups are bankrolling startup news organizations around the country, aggressively covering government and politics at a time when newspapers are cutting back their statehouse bureaus.

The news outlets usually receive their money from right-leaning, free-market organizations...

"If you have a laptop, a wireless card and a flip cam, you're as powerful as The New York Times," said Jason Stverak, a former North Dakota Republican Party director who runs the year-old Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity in Bismarck and advises news outlets like those in Harrisburg and Boise.

The AP story is timely, as we have a big story from Now!Hampshire called "Source: State Dems scrambling to deploy tea party ‘crashers.’" Their nameless informant -- who, like the jiu jitsu practitioners who used to advertise on the backs of comic books, "sought anonymity for fear of reprisals" -- allegedly told N!H that former Democratic State Party Chairman Kathy Sullivan -- who, the website reminds us, "has been attending meetings of the [Mancester] Board of Mayor and Aldermen to glower at Mayor Ted Gatsas" -- is "heading up" a tea party infiltration scheme.

This is not the self-admitted CrashTheTeaParty operation of Josh Levin they're talking about, but an alleged false-flag operation run by a prominent Democratic attorney known mainly for pursuing unremarkable legal action on her party's behalf.

Nonetheless the story is immediately and unquestioningly believed by the sort of people who would find this sort of thing immediately and unquestioningly believable ("Setting the Stage For An American Neda" -- Confederate Yankee).

Now!Hampshire, by the way, was started up by Patrick Hynes, described by National Review as "one of the bright minds behind CrushKerry.com, now AnkleBitingPundits.com." He has also worked as a political consultant; Andrew Cline of the Union-Leader describes some of Hynes' prevarications in that role ("Hynes identified himself as 'executive director of Responsible Environmental Policy for New Hampshire'... Turns out the group did not exist").

Hynes was previously head of something called New Media Strategics, which attempted to manipulate blog chatter in less direct ways. But hell, why bother with middlemen? The great thing about the internet is, no one knows you're an operative, particularly if you take pains not to let them know.

UPDATE. SIster Toldjah finds more liberal perfidy in a North Carolina ordinance prohibiting the TP People's Gadsden flags from being mounted on long poles:

That’s strange, because the only times I ever see flags used as weapons is when radical leftists set fire to them.

How did I miss this flaming-flag weapon? It sounds rilly cool, and should be in a 3-D movie.

UPDATE 2. Sullivan denies it.