The Competitive Demonization of Jesse Helms

My initial post on Jesse Helms death (where I cite the left's tremendous disrespect of the North Carolina Senator), generated this from Whisky Fire:

The numbnut at the American Power blog says this post is "among the most disrespectful" posts about Helms' death in the Left Blogosphere. The devil you say! This is at least one of the top two most disrespectful posts in the Left Blogosphere on the subject of this particular expired bigot, as it features the word "motherf**ker." Martini Revolution says "good f**king riddance," and Comments from Left Field remarks that he was a "racist, homophobic assbag," which are both accurate and morally unexceptionable, but do not rise to the level of "motherf**ker." I'm not sure we've surpassed TBogg's observation that Senator Helms is currently getting ass-f**ked by Roy Cohn in Hell, however.

These are crucial distinctions and it is important to get them right.

What can I say? Maybe the lefties find competitive demonization funny?

I can note that a number of other commentators noticed the depths of Whiskey Fire's depravity, for example, in Noel Sheppard's, "Netroots Celebrate Helms's Death With Vulgar Attacks:"

Apparently devoid of ... human decency, the folks in the Netroots, within minutes of Friday's announcement concerning the death of Jesse Helms, began publishing virulent and vulgar epithets directed at the former senator, with some actually voicing a desire to dance on his grave.

Devoid of human decency pretty much sums things up. Indeed, not to be outdone, Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, sought this morning to have the last word on Helms' alleged evil, starting with an obligatory moral qualifier:

I haven't written anything about Jesse Helms' death, since I don't like speaking ill of the dead. However: every so often, conservatives wonder: why oh why do people think that the Republican party, and/or the conservative movement, is bigoted? I think that the conservative response to Helms' death ought to settle that debate once and for all.

Hilzoy's post is one long chronicle of Helms' statements on the controversial issues of the day, with not a shred of countervailing information to provide some balance.

It's clear that left and right are not going to agree on how to treat the legacy of someone as polarizing as Jesse Helms.

But for the record, here are some additional thought for consideration, first, from Marc Thiessen:

With the passing of Sen. Jesse Helms, the media have demonstrated one final time that they never fully understood the power or impact of this great man. Consider, for example, The Post's obituary of Helms; here are some things you would not learn about his life and legacy by reading it:

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms led the successful effort to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the NATO alliance. He secured passage of bipartisan legislation to protect our men and women in uniform from the International Criminal Court. He won overwhelming approval for his legislation to support the Cuban people in their struggle against a tyrant. He won majority support in the Senate for his opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He helped secure passage of the National Missile Defense Act and stopped the Clinton administration from concluding a new anti-ballistic missile agreement in its final months in office -- paving the way for today's deployment of America's first defenses against ballistic missile attack. He helped secure passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, which expressed strong bipartisan support for regime change in Baghdad. He secured broad, bipartisan support to reorganize the State Department and bring much-needed reform to the United Nations, and he became the first legislator from any nation to address the U.N. Security Council -- a speech few in that chamber will forget.

Watching this record of achievement unfold, columnist William Safire wrote in 1997: "Jesse Helms, bete noire of knee-jerk liberals . . . is turning out to be the most effectively bipartisan chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since Arthur Vandenberg. . . . Let us see if he gets the credit for statesmanship that he deserves from a striped-pants establishment." This weekend, we got our answer.

What his critics could not appreciate is that, by the time he left office, Jesse Helms had become a mainstream conservative. And it was not because Helms had moved toward the mainstream -- it was because the mainstream moved toward him.

But note the discussion of Helm's in William Link's preface to, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism:

Although Jesse had earned a fearsome reputation for his slash-and-burn political tactics, there was also a softer side. Within his political circle, Helms was compassionate and caring; his Senate staffers uniformly remembered him warmly. By the late 1980s, Helms was well known for his personal style and his conscious rejection of the imperiousness of some of his colleagues. In 1998, when the Washingtonian surveyed 1,200 staffers and Capitol Hill employees, Jesse was rated among the nicest senators. Garrett Epps, a columnist for the liberal Independent Weekly, published in Durham, interviewed Helms in 1989. He was surprised at what he found. “The Helms I expected,” he recalled, “was a sizzling-hot, angry, defensive ideologue.” The person he found instead was “relaxed, friendly, funny and genuinely curious about ideas and people.” Don Nickles, one of Helms’s closest allies in the Senate, later reflected that the common caricatures of Helms as mean and vindictive were “misplaced.” Nickles described him as “probably the nicest person serving in the Senate,” certainly “the most gentlemanly of any of the senators,” and a person who “epitomized the Southern gentleman.” In his dealings with other senators he was “always very pleasant, never disagreeable.” He was also unpretentious, according to Nickles. During Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981, Nickles recalled, Helms objected when police stopped traffic so that a bus with senators could pass through.

Helms’ personal warmth extended beyond senators. The third floor of the Dirksen Office Building, where Jesse’s Senate offices were located, contained two public elevators, which were old and slow, and three private elevators reserved only for senators. Staffers and visitors that snuck on the senators’ elevator were routinely evicted. The public elevator, located just outside of Helms’s office, was often crowded with tourists. If he noticed them waiting, Helms delighted in gathering tourists and taking them on the senators’ elevator, or for a ride on the Senate subway shuttle that ran between Dirksen and the Capitol, even when votes were about to occur and the shuttle was reserved for senators. Sometimes, on the spur of the moment, Helms ushered tourists to the family gallery, on the third floor of the Senate, and provided seats for them to watch the proceedings. The Senate guards were so used to Jesse’s routine with visitors that they often chuckled when they saw him coming with an entourage in tow. He considered himself a sort of unofficial host of Capitol Hill, and he personally felt that it was his duty to ensure that tourists enjoyed their visit.

There's more at the link.

Helms was also apparently unsurpassed at constituency service, a quality even Pam Spaulding noted in her otherwise critical obituary (which she updates here).

Other leftists were also respectful (here and here, for example), but overall I think the whole episode largely confirms the secular demonology of contemporary far left-wing ideologues on matters of life and death.

See also, Little Green Footballs, "RIP, Jesse Helms," and Ross Douthat, "The Case of Jesse Helms."

Douthat says Helms should not be a model:

If Ronald Reagan and Helms had similar positions on countless issues, that doesn't prove that Helms was good for conservatism; it only suggests that conservatives should look for more Reagans, and fewer Jesse Helms. I'm happy to defend Helms' views on a variety of issues, but the man himself has no business in the right-wing pantheon, and the conservatives who have used his death as an occasion to argue that he does are doing their movement a grave disservice.

That's not the key issue from my perspective (and Douthat might underestimate Helms' impact), but see the whole thing.

There's an interesting reaction at Village Voice as well, "Post Racial: Rightbloggers Shade Helms' Civil Rights History."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Progressivism Goes Mainstream?

Sometimes I ask myself "why"?

Why worry about the likes of Markos Moulitsas and the angry hordes of the hard-left blogosphere? These folks can't genuinely threaten traditional decency and order. They're nothing more than an extreme fringe, unnoticed by the great silent majority of Americans, to be tolerated, even indulged once in a while, right?

I'd say yes, but for the life of me Kos and others like him get a lot of attention, and their bullying totalitarianism gets results.

It turns out that the Austin American-Statesman has repudiated and removed from its website a front-page story on last week's Netroots Nation convention at the insistence of Daily Kos.

An article, critical of the netroots radicals, was written by Patrick Beach, a "featured writer" at the paper. In turn, Greg Mitchell, at Daily Kos, attacked Beach as writing an "opinion" piece instead of hard news:

The new newspaper trend - even extending to boring old AP - of encouraging reporters to not merely report but opine in their "news" pieces reared its ugly head again this morning by way of a front page story in the Austin American-Statesman on Saturday's Netroots Nation events.

Patrick Beach, a feature writer at the paper who once described himself as a "raging moderate," repeatedly described the gathering in stereotypes that better fit the aging Old Left of years ago than the much younger Netroots of today. I mean, how many of you have ever read much of Chomsky...?

What was Beach's sin? Hitting a little too close to home, I'd say. Here's a sample:

Name-dropping Al Gore and his call for a switch to clean, renewable energy within 10 years was enough to pull whoops of approval from the 2,000 or 3,000 marauding liberals gathered for Netroots Nation at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday morning.

So when the former vice president and Nobel Prize co-winner made a surprise — and cleverly scripted — appearance during U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's talk, it looked like the conference might turn into a faint-in.

Talk that Pelosi (who is arguably so left-leaning that her parenthetical should be D-Beijing) would have a Very Special Guest had been buzzing about the conference of liberal bloggers, pols and media types since it began Thursday (it concludes today). But it wasn't clear to attendees that something was afoot until a schedule change handed out Saturday morning indicated the speaker's talk would last 45 minutes longer than previously indicated.

Not that Gore's appearance was necessary to whip up the troops.

From the beginning, it was clear these people were convinced the electoral map would be repainted with a brush sopping with blue paint come November.

Perhaps the piece is a bit satirical, but it's not unlike what's published routinely on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which includes an offbeat news story at the bottom of column three every morning, or the Los Angeles Times, which features "Column One" daily, with many of the feature stories comprising fun-loving takes on the quirks of life.

No matter ... the newspaper caved:

Readers expect front-page stories to speak directly and clearly about events and issues. Eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding from our work is a critical part of our daily newsroom routine. When we communicate in a way that could be misinterpreted, we fail to meet our standards.

Our front-page story Sunday about the Netroots Nation convention included doses of irony and exaggeration. It made assertions (that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might find herself at home politically in Beijing, for example) and characterizations ("marauding liberals" was one) meant to amuse. For many readers, we failed.

In trying for a humorous take on the Netroots phenomenon without labeling it something other than a straightforward news story, we compromised our standards.

I guess that's it then. No more room for irony in serious journalism. I somehow doubt Jonathan Swift would be amused.

But there's more: Katherine Seelye reports that Markos Moulitsas - again - has announced that his progressive movement's the new mainstream:

Back in the early 1990s, with the rise of talk radio, conservative commentators derisively dubbed newspapers, magazines and broadcast television as the “mainstream media.” More recently, with the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal bloggers joined in, abbreviating the term to MSM.

But now the Internet has overtaken most newspapers and broadcasts as a source of news, and some on the left say the lingo ought to reflect that.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos Web site, the biggest liberal hub online, wrote on Monday that the heretofore “mainstream media” should be called the “traditional media.” Calling it mainstream implies that the Internet is fringe, he said, when in fact liberal bloggers, at least, are “representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we’re selling.”

Seelye notes, thankfully, that Moulitsas' megalomania hasn't gone unnoticed:

As you might imagine, not everyone agrees that Kos now represents the mainstream, and some have been mocking him (“If Moulitsas’s netroots were truly the mainstream, why would they attack a MODERATE Democrat who rarely strayed from the party line?” one asked, in reference to his debate Friday with Harold Ford, chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.)

That's fine, although leftist hopes are indeed high that the long-awaited proletarian revolution's coming in November.

Ezra Klein, a prominent left-wing writer in attendence at Netroots Nation, asked of the event's political significance, "Is Social Democracy A-Coming?"

It turns out that Klein's vision of this coming millenarian social democracy includes the elimination of meat from the diet. That's right: Meat's the new Marlboro, a socially incorrect health hazard that should be phased out of American diets to save the environment (meat production leaves a larger "carbon footprint").

This is the kind of progressivism that the netroots hordes want to ram down Americans' throats. But let's be honest: While perhaps the netroots hordes aren't up on Chomsky, they're certainly right at home with the kind of drastic change called for by '60-era ideology.

Indeed, Moulitsas has a new book forthcoming that offers a manifesto for today's netroots progressivism, Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era. Here's the product description:

The Sixties are over and the rules of power have been transformed. In order to change the world one needs to know how to manipulate the media, not just march in the streets. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, otherwise known as "Kos," is today's symbol of digital activism, giving a voice to everyday people. In "Taking on the System," Kos has taken a cue from his revolutionary predecessor's doctrine, Saul Alinksy's Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and places this epic hand-book in today's digital era, empowering every American to make a difference in the 21st century.

There's some sheer hypocrisy - if not irony - inherent in this blurb.

Markos Moulitsas, who proclaims himself a digital revolutionary in his new book, sponsors attacks on news coverage of the very radicalism of his own movement - with the desired result achieved in the capitulation of the Austin American-Statesman to the left's totalitarian thought police.

But lest readers forget: Daily Kos is the blogosphere's top portal for the left's secular demonology of hate. Not only are moderate Democratic Party officials savagely attacked, the most extreme racist, anti-Semitic essays are published regularly on the blog.

Moulitsas himself is not above attacking John McCain for his teeth. As I've noted before:

The Kos page still hosts the rabidly anti-Semitic entry, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

Kos himself recently attacked John McCain's physical appearance, ridiculing the Arizona Senator in a post entitled "McCain's Teeth."The "teeth" post is particularly egregious, considering that the McCain's teeth were broken off at the gumline by his North Vietnamese captors in 1968.

I think people really need to step back and think about this.

Kristin Power argued recently that the Kos kids hardly represent mainstream Democrat voters, people who are more concerned about paying their mortgage or securing health insurance than about FISA wiretaps.

And she's right, but incomplete. Moulitsas is onto something when he makes the case that the revolution's gone online, at least in the sense that the radical left bloggers are the "squeaky wheel" of the current Democratic Party policy base. Sure leftists lost on the FISA domestic surveillance bill, but look at the left's gleeful triumphalism this week on Barack Obama's world tour.

An Obama administration will restore 1930s-era pacifism as "mainstream" American foreign policy. Obama has said he'd consider war crimes trials for Bush administration officials - a main quiver in the leftosphere's Jacobin agenda - upon taking power. Obama's proposed dismantling America's nuclear arsenal. He reportedly had no problem with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestian terrorist cell, providing security for his visit to Ramallah on the West Bank. And he's on board the radical global warming agenda, pushed by the Al Gore-faction of the Democratic Party left.

And that's just a sample in foreign policy! Domestically, from affirmative action to taxes, Barack Obama's a radical's dream.

So, while folks can quibble on whether or not Moulitsas represents the mainstream, the big picture suggests that should Obama be elected to office, he'll be pulled even further left than he already is. Call it a realignment or a revolution, but it's a direction in which many traditional Americans would not rather not go.

Searching for Hate in the Blogosphere

Even before Arkansas Democratic Chairman Bill Gwatney succumbed to his gunshot wounds on Wednesday, the left-wing blogosphere lit-up with allegations that a right-wing extremist had shot another liberal.

For example, leftist bloggers were quick to allege, without the release of any details on the assailant's background or motive, that conservative "wingnuts" like Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin encouraged a "climate of hate" that provoked the extermination of liberals (recall just two weeks ago a gunman killed two at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, in Knoxville, Tennessee).

In an essay this week, Jonathan Bellman of the University of Northern Colorado, argued that the right has essentially declared open-season on the word "liberal" and anyone associated with it:

It has become what “Jew” was in Nazi Germany and “Communist” was during the Red Scare: something so threatening that it needn’t be explained or questioned. Right-wing high priests like Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have for a long time implied that “liberal” equals something like “seditious terrorist.” It is so ingrained now that we barely notice, or quietly agree.

As I've noted before, the left's propensity to see evil designs on liberals reflects their own ideological foundations in hatred, a secular demonology protective of the perceived purity of the liberal sensibilities.

It's thus interesting to note the dust-up online today over the discovery of death threats against "liberal traitors" on some conservative websites:

On Wednesday night, Fox "News'" Bill O'Reilly continued his dishonest and deceptive attacks on websites, such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, which he misleadingly describes as "hate sites" featuring "vicious far-left attacks" as based on selective reader comments he's discovered posted on those sites.

In the latest of his continuing segments with "Internet Cop" Amanda Carpenter, of the rightwing website Townhall.com, O'Reilly pointed to a number of objectionable comments at the two sites, from "far-left kooks," before tepidly lauding both HuffPo and Daily Kos for having removed some of them, presumably after they were brought to the attention of site moderators.

"Where is that rocket propelled grenade launcher when you need one," O'Reilly displayed on a chyron, and then "Let's hope the dissidents aim is good!" Both of the quotes are purported to be from a "Blog Posting" at HuffPo, according to the Fox "News" graphic, posted in regard to a group of Iraq War Veterans who support the war effort....

But O'Reilly and Carpenter clearly have been protesting a bit too much, as it turns out Carpenter's own website is guilty of the same --- and even far worse --- "vicious" attacks, and potentially even illegal ones, including death threats issued against Barack Obama and "traitorous liberals."

Despite the mock outrage of the Fox rightwingers, The BRAD BLOG has been pointed, by a reader, to a number of out-and-out (and repeated) death threats issued by "bloggers" at Carpenter's own Townhall site.

The multiple threatening comments are posted on the Townhall blog of rightwing radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt, and include death threats against the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama. They were posted on July 10th of this year at Townhall and, as of this posting on August 14th, still remain on the popular rightwing website which requires registration before commenters are allowed to post...

Picking up on this, Dave Neiwart, the leftosphere's premiere crusader against "pseudo-fascism," has denounced conservative hatred:

Two days ago, a gunman walked into the offices of the Democratic Party in Little Rock, Arkansas, and shot the state's chairman to death. The motives are still unclear, but it is starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to "take out" more liberals.

Two weeks ago, another gunman walked into a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began shooting, killing one man and wounding several others before he was tackled. He had written a manifesto before the rampage indicating his belief that "all liberals should be killed." At his home, investigators found books attacking liberals by the likes of Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and ... Bill O'Reilly.

These issues have, of course, never been discussed on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program. O'Reilly has never even mentioned the fact that the Knoxville shooter read his books and evidently watched his show. Indeed, his show not only constantly demonizes liberals, O'Reilly frequently does so by accusing liberals of being the source of vicious hatemongering -- as he did Wednesday, in the segment above, in which he informs us that "the real haters in America are on the far left" -- even though the majority of the quotes they cite are from anonymous commenters and diarists, and in every case the host site has removed them.

But as BradBlog noticed, one need only go to the Townhall.com site that hosts of Amanda Carpenter, his guest in this segment, to find prime examples of right-wing hate directed at liberals -- and no apparent attempt made to remove them. A sample, from Hugh Hewitt's blog:

A day of reckoning approaches... (Why is it liberal traitors like Brob feel they have to resort to profanity to make points? Because they equate emotionalism with reality - "If I scream loud enough and make enough of a scene, I'll get my way". Ten-year-old potty-mouthed brats, all of them.)

And I said traitors intentionally. I know more than one military man and woman stationed overseas who cannot wait to rotate back once the job over there is done and complete the work of fighting all enemies foreign AND domestic, Posse Comitatus be damned, and hunt down the Copperheads in our midst.

Traitors, be afraid. Be very afraid.

There's plenty more, of course, where this came from. And you can always find similar sentiments at O'Reilly's site, where again no effort is ever made to remove such commentary.

But, I suppose, we "Nazis" on the left are responsible for this. Probably because we just always inspire these sentiments, so therefore it's our fault.

Let me be the first to put out the call, once again, for a complete cessation to the competitive demonization we see across the blogosphere. I'm not as naïve to think that we won't have mutual allegations of hatred, and certainly folks on both sides of the political spectrum engage in incitement to violence in the comment threads at untold numbers of blogs, but these attacks shouldn't be a part of our political dialogue.

I'll note, though, that Neiwart confuses those alleged as "Nazis" by some commentators with contemporary Marxist demonologists who have shunned divine grace to launch steady attacks against dead conservatives, most recently Jesse Helms and Tony Snow.

Moreover, whereas some right-wing blogs are polluted by the odd instances of extremism, like that cited at Townhall, it is not the explicit policy of conservatives to welcome hated-filled comments as original "content" at the website, as is the case with leftist blogs such as Daily Kos (see here and here).

Perhaps the left's permissive attitudes toward aggressive hatred on their blogs relates to the much higher propensity for leftist bloggers to pepper their attacks on "wingnuts" with vile obscenities (a recent Google content analysis found liberal bloggers to be more that 12 times as likely to use profanity in blogging than conservatives).

So, while we should all condemn attempts to inflict evil on the other, it's simply hypocritical and inaccurate for members of the left to mount unsubstantiated attacks on alleged conservative hate-filled killers while at the same time encouraging artistic license of such content demonology in the leftosphere.

Communist REPSAC = CASPER Takes Umbrage?

Actually, no one's taken "umberage" at anything, since there's no such thing as "umberage." In fact, REPSAC = CASPER obviously stayed up all night writing yet another obsessive screed and blew off editing this nonsense. One passage is worth quoting here:

"As I said before, Donald and his friends are not showing these communist groups getting widespread support for their ideology ..."

Actually, I've been documenting progressive-socialist influence in American politics for years. It's threatening to people, which is why leftists continue their attempts to shut me down and destroy my livelihood. Comes with the territory. As for this notion of "not showing widespread support for their ideology," well, Americans elected Barack Obama with 53 percent of the vote, and as Stanley Kurtz has written:

The pattern of misdirection upon which President Obama’s political career has been built has its roots in the socialist background of community organizing. ACORN, Reverend Wright, and Bill Ayers were all routes into that hidden socialist world, and that is why Obama has had to obscure the truth about these and other elements of his past. More important, the president’s socialist past is still very much alive in the governing philosophy and long-term political strategy of the Obama administration.

That's how it works. Progressives from the president on down work in stealth mode with nefarious groups coordinating at different levels with hardline communist and revolutionary organizations. Again, nothing I could write would sink through REPSAC = CASPER's blinkers of hate and demonology, but the facts remain. Kurtz is probably the foremost expert on Barack Obama's longstanding socialists ties. The DEMOCRAT-PROGRESSIVE-MEDIA-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX worked overtime to subvert the truth before the 2008 election, but over and over again the president's own statements have proved otherwise. Indeed, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in his latest book, To Save America, warned that the "Democrats are trying to impose a secular-socialist machine rejected by most Americans." Stalking slimebag REPSAC = CASPER is in denial. Depending on the source, today there's roughly 80 socialist members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. REPSAC = CASPER ridicules these numbers as a WND conspiracy, but in 2002, when the party's infiltration was still growing, the Communist Party U.S.A. was pretty impressed:

Although this Caucus is not large enough to control the Congressional agenda or even to break into the media, the existence of this group of 57 members of Congress, which includes 20 members of the Congressional Black Caucus and six members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, provides an important lever that can be used to advance workers' issues and move the debate to the left in every Congressional District in the country.

EARTH to REPSAC = CASPER: These are REAL communists. These are REAL communists of the STALINIST variety. These REAL communists were financed by Moscow until Mikhail Gorbachev cut the cord in the 1980s. These REAL communists are thrilled at the growth of socialist influence in the United States Congress. So don't lie, REPSAC = CASPER. You are a communist. And you are a lying sleazeball stalker with absolutely no respect for truth or reason. I've called you out. My friends have called you out. Time to put it to bed: RETIRE AMERICAN NIHILIST!!

Democratic Values! Left-Wing Alaska Operative 'Ghoulshops' Trig Palin!

A top Alaska Democratic Party operative once again proves the everyday demonology of left-wing secular progressives.

Via Gateway Pundit and Conservatives for Sarah Palin, it turns out that Linda Kellen Biegel, the publisher of Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis, has Photoshopped a ghoulish picture of Trig Palin at her blog. She's also linked by the Alaska Democratic Party website:

From Conservatives for Sarah Palin:

Disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself. Is this the position of the Alaska Democratic party? Keep in mind that she was the official Alaska blogger for the DNC.

Does Bob Poe, who attended a Q&A with Linda Biegel, approve of this?

Actually, why don't you email Bob Poe himself to find out...

And she's linked at the Alaska Democrat's website!

Check this link for the e-mail addresses to Alaska State Democratic Party officials.

Here's Biegel's Facebook link (available from a public Google search). Send her a "friend" request with a personal message!

**********

UPDATE: Celtic Diva's response is here. And this is what it's all about:

When folks like this think a radio talk show host is a "Homophobic, Red Shirt, Bible-Thumping Nazi, Gay Bashing, Tea-Bagging Racist, White Guy Bigot," it's pretty clear they're not losing sleep over "ghoulshopping" Trig Palin into a grotesque ridicule of Downs syndrome.

More information here:

For those of you who might be unaware, Linda Kellen Biegel was one of the people who filed a frivolous ethics complaint against Gov. Palin. Her complaint claimed that the governor abused the Ethics Act because she wore a jacket with ... the logo of the company that sponsors her husband in the Iron Dog snowmachine race. Biegel's ridiculous complaint was, of course, dismissed, but not after costing the governor thousands of dollars in legal debt to defend herself. You can donate to the governor's legal defense fund, The Alaska Fund Trust, here.Biegel's use of this sick photoshop is part of her efforts to raise money for her next frivolous ethics complaint.

The Left's Demonology of Vengeance

At the same time that Barack Obama's been presumptiously preparing his presidential transition team, the hard left forces of the nihilist left are sharpening their knives in preparation for a campaign of legal vengeance against the Bush administration's alleged record of war crimes in the battle against global terror.

Salon, for example, ran a piece earlier this week entitled "Exposing Bush's Historic Abuse of Power," which suggests the formation of a new "Church Commission" to investigate domestic surveillance in the Bush years (the article includes the obligatory Nazi Reichsadler pictured above).

Also, there's news this week that left-wing bloggers (and their allies on the Paulbot right) are mounting a program of electoral mobilization against Democrats who supported the FISA reform bill just passed in Congress. Leading the pack is Jane Hamsher, who has teamed with fringe libertarians to form a group called The Strange Bedfellows. The organization's goal is to promote an "accountability" campaign of legal recrimination against the administration's "lawless surveillance state."

One gets a good sense of how intense are the demands for extremist retribution in Matt Stoler's post, "Democratic Congressional Candidate Alan Grayson on Iraq Reckoning: 'We'll Put People in Prison'":

One of the most exciting candidates I've met this cycle is Alan Grayson, a high profile trial lawyer who has been suing defense contractors for fraud, and is now running for Florida's eighth district in central Florida. I spent some time with him at Netroots Nation, and took video. Usually I have to push candidates to become more aggressive, in Grayson's case, he pushed me. Grayson is part of a new crew of progressive professionals, people like Darcy Burner and Donna Edwards with a tremendous track record of success in fields other than politics who are crossing over into the progressive sector out of a sheer revulsion of where this country is headed. It's different than the civil rights era of liberalism and the single issue liberalism of the 1980s, much more fearless.

Because of his track record suing defense contractors, Grayson is completely uninterested and unintimidated by ridiculous arguments about secrecy and national security. He thinks that war crimes have been committed, that people need to be put in prison, and that we absolutely cannot let bygones be bygones with the 2000-2008 era.

That last section really sums it up.

For the nihilist left, few are putting a priority on improving the econony, rebuilding infrastruce, or exploring means toward American energy independence - some of the top issues facing the mass of rank-and-file Democratic Party voters. What's motivated the hard left hordes are subterranean questions of lawbreaking by the administration. The agenda of electing "agressive progressives" is code language for mounting a campaign of revenge against Republicans who are routinely alleged to have taken the country "recklessly toward war. Just this week Representitive Dennis Kucinich, a leader of antiwar contingent in Congress, held hearings on Capitol Hill to investigate the administration for "leading the country to war under false pretenses."

Recall that the Iraq war, of course, was launched under a bipartisan congressional mandate, but within months of the same Democrats in Congress - who supported America's goal to rid Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction - turned around for cheap partisan purposes to advocate the craven withdrawal from Iraq, the abandonment of our troops, and the surrender to the forces of Islamist totalitarianism.

As for the legal case for war crimes, the issue's debateable, and establishing them as a top priority in 2009 would create a political circus. The administration might do well to prevent a massive witch hunt by issues blanket pardons before leaving office.

Of course, it's hard to see the left's push for criminal prosecutions as more than diabolical partisan revenge. These developments, indeed, are the natural consequence of the left's doctrine of hatred. The incessant calls for criminal prosecution against the Bush administration satisfies the radical left's psychological need for vengeance against the percieved slights of intellectual and political marginalization.

It's not enough to organize for a restoration of the public spirit in health care, transportation, or other areas of needed revitalization, under a possible Democratic administration. The modern ideological hatred of the secular left demands nothing short of a totalizing political persecution for the very democratically-legitimated conservative leaders who have run the run the country for the last seven years.

Caleb Howe Doesn't Like Roger Ebert

Folks gotta read this, "I Don’t Like Roger Ebert." (Via Memeorandum.)

I just tweeted @ CalebHowe the other day, so it's strangely funny kinda coincidence. And the fits of apoplexy caused by this are simply astounding.

Even better is that Ebert couldn't let things go, wrote a big follow-up slamming his critics, and gets slammed in return.

BONUS EXTRA: Behold a radical secular demonologist take (hypocritical) exception to the right's clever use of (turnaround) demonology.