Thanks Carla. Keep shining the biggest light you can on these teabaggers. Letting America see them as they are is the best course. Back in the 1980s Bob Packwood worried aloud that there weren't enough angry white men out there for Republicans to keep winning elections. It cost Packwood his position within the Republican party. Not much has changed.

Wow. I have my differences with Nathanson, Edwards and Hoyle at times, but I know all three of them to be personally kind, considerate of their constituents, and devinitely UNdeserving of such crap from the Beck/Palin brigade.

The biggest laugh line from the Teabag Statement of Principles is their claim to the values of " honesty, reverence, hope, thrift, humility, charity, sincerity, moderation, hard work, courage, personal responsibility and gratitude."

Funny...I support all twelve of those values, which is one reason I repudiate everything about the dishonest, flatulent, cynical, profligate, arrogant, misanthropic, doubletalking, extremist, lazy-ass, cowardly, irresponsible, constantly complaining Teabag Movement. They stand for the exact opposite of what they claim to value.

I mean, seriously. Which among those twelve values they claim for themselves do YOU see being practiced in those comments? Is it honest of them to put up a badly edited video that misrepresents their elected leaders, and then to trash talk them and send threatening mail? Is it reverent? Moderate? Brave? Hopeful? Thrifty? Charitable? Sincere?

Teabaggers are dangerous. They must be investigated, isolated and contained before they do further harm.

Val Hoyle is a great Oregonian. Those Tea Baggers are just showing their true colors as hateful and self-indulgent. Their pattern is to shout down the opposition and hope for media coverage. I dare them to post the entire video and then to discuss the issues in an open forum without yelling or jeering.

Having had the opportunity to personally meet each one of these elected officials, I know how hard they work and how much they care about their districts. People will always have ideological differences when it comes to politics, but that is no reason to threaten or insult others. I have no problem with different views, when people back it up with sound arguments. Threats and slander show desperation from people who cannot justify their own fanaticism.

    Senator Edwards, Rep. Hoyle and Rep Nathanson -  I live in your area and you all have my complete support.  Keep up the good work and don't let people like this get you down.  You hold your elected office because "we the people" want you there.

Rep Hoyle, Rep Nathanson and Sen Edwards are all extremely hard working, dedicated officials. Whether you agree with their politics or not you should always respect them. I am disgusted that grown adults would act in this manner.

Admiral, I don't see how they're worse than most right wingers, even those called moderate. To a person their social agenda is for YOU- never them. Your idea of reciprocity is like expecting an Edwardian laird of the manor to apply the same standards to himself that he does the butler. We've gotten so sensitized by racist and elitist speech that we forget that there's real behavior underlying it. Things like really believing that angry white men have a reason for it, and they need to get uppity women and minorities to heel to fix the country's woes. Just like the evangelicals. They are justified. Bottom line, I don't think they share enough of your values to be insulted.

TEA protesters remind me of the guy that felt, smelled, poked around in, and tasted a suspected pile of dog crap so that he would be sure not to step in it. I mean, this Aaron Baker, here's a completely normal vacation for one of the TEA crowd.

Oh, and look at the Facebook pages he likes. Exactly what you'd expect of a t-head, Glenn, Dudley and the Ducks. And Ron Wyden. The lunatic right knows which side their bread is buttered on!

Shame on the teabaggers. Hopefully they'll start getting the message that they are the teabag and America is the tea and since they are oversteeped, it's time to throw them in the trash.

Gotta love a pol that writes his own material. Seriously.

What these folks don't seem to realize is that their behavior has been seen as contemptible for centuries.

From the New Testament, NIV translation, Romans I: verses 28-31

28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Years ago some of us discovered how angry it makes these types to have the Bible quoted against them.

Revelation 3:14-3:17 makes just as eloquent an argument against tepid thinking (certainly not LT), accusing it of the exact same evils. You can argue anything from scripture. I have . To whit:

14 And to the angel of the church of Laodicea write; These things says the Hameen, the faithful and true witness, from the beginning of God's creation:

15 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So, because you are tepid, and neither cold nor hot, I will projectile vomit you from my mouth. 17 Because you say, I am rich, and with major bling, and have need of nothing; and don't know that you are accursed, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked...

(Z translation ).

One thing (among many) that bothers me is that the people who posted the ugly comments under Baker's You Tube video, and Baker himself, accuse Reps Nathanson and Hoyle and Sen. Edwards of promoting socialism, communism, and fascism -- all of which are completely different economic/political systems. I don't expect folks to be experts to participate in our democracy, but if you are going to use a term as an accusation and to whip up mob sentiment, at least know what you are saying. Also, if one actually listens to the elected officials' comments in the You Tube video, they are talking primarily about supporting small businesses and bringing jobs to Oregon. Smells like capitalism to me.

I am incredibly proud of Senator Edwards, Rep. Hoyle and Rep Nathanson. They are great people and excellent legislators. That's the bottom line.

I knew Nancy Nathanson when she was the vice chair of the Lane County Democrats. A brave, principled woman. It saddens me to see her under such attack by these jerks.

Lame post.

THose comments are nothing worse than the tripe you put up on Blue ORegon Carla.

It is amazing that you talk about a youtube video and comments posted on it. Really? Thats your story? comments?

Then you say some legislator has received threatening letters and somehow infer that comes from the same group.

That is ridiculous.

This shouldnt even be a post. Really really bad quality for blue oregon....and I am a dem and still sickened by this.

You should read Eugene Weekly Article

Welcome to the Tea Party No taxation without localized irritation by Camilla Mortensen This rv showed up at the tea party rally in salem this week. photo by Deborah Bloom. Aaron Baker Jaynee Germond

The Tea Party isn’t a party at all. It’s not a political party (except in Nevada), and sup-porters say it’s not the gathering of Mad Hatters that the left and the mainstream media have made it out to be.

So who are these people, and what do they want?

Tea Partiers are sensitive to what they call the mainstream media criticisms that have mocked them with tea bag jokes and for their faith-based politics and accused them of racism in their criticisms of Obama and in their fight against undocumented workers.

There is no one group in Lane County that holds Tea Party values; rather, there are several of them, from Lane and Cottage Grove 9.12ers to local members of Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.

The Tea Partiers say that they are a bipartisan group with conservative and Libertarian ideals. They want to get back to basic values like God and the Constitution. They say they are Republicans and Democrats alike — though EW was not able to find any Democrats associated with the Tea Party for this story — and, in Lane County, they represent people who are unhappy with the direction this country is heading.

The Birth of a Movement

The story of the Tea Party reads like what religious scholars and rhetoricians call a jeremiad, a type of sermon that follows in the vein of the biblical Jeremiah. God charged Jeremiah with chiding Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah for worshipping idols and other not-so-good things and telling them to get back to the way God was supposed to be worshipped. Jeremiah got beaten up, imprisoned and a host of other stuff for his trouble.

A rhetorical jeremiad follows a formula: First it reminds the audience of the courage and piety of the founders, then it laments recent and current problems, and finally it cries out for a return to original conduct and zeal. For Tea Partiers, this is the challenge: to remember the founding fathers, to speak out against what America has become and finally to get Americans to return to the founding ideals of the Constitution.

The Tea Party, despite that whole colonial Boston thing, really got its start in the land of coffee — the Pacific Northwest — and it darn near could have been called the Anti-Porkulus Party.

Conservative Seattle blogger Keli Carender, aka “Liberty Belle,” appears to have been the first to bring the Tea Partiers together when she put out the word about a protest on Feb. 16, 2009, in Seattle against the federal Stimulus Bill, or, as she called it, the Porkulus Bill. And yes, pork was served at the protest. Seattle’s porkulus protest kicked off other tax protests around the country, with roast pigs of their own.

But it was CNBC’s Rick Santelli, a cable-news reporter and former futures trader, whose rant later that month against the White House mortgage bailout plan gave the Tea Party its name. In a clip that quickly went viral on YouTube, Santelli railed, “The government is promoting bad behavior.”

Amid cheers from people behind him on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, he said, “We’re thinking about having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m going to start organizing.”

Rather than tea, “We’re going to be dumping in some derivative securities,” Santelli said.

And so was born the Tea Party Patriots, an “official grassroots American movement.” Across the nation it spawned local groups seeking to unite those who share the core values of “fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets,” according to its website. The Tea Party already had protesters sporting tea bags by April 15, 2009.

And there is indeed that whole unfortunate “teabagging” issue.

Though Tea Partiers now distance themselves from the term, which has a certain sexual connotation, early protests did involve tea bags. A tax day protest last year in Washington, D.C., was brought to a halt when protesters threw teabags and boxes of teabags at the White House, leading to a potential bomb scare. The tea-protest types were also urged to mail tea bags to their federal representatives on websites like www.teabagparty.org (“tax protest for busy people”). The Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes, blogging on tax day 2009, speculated, “Are today’s tea bag protests a grassroots phenomenon or just a ratings tool for Fox News?”

The left seized with delight on the whole scrotum-in-the-mouth connotation, as at first did the mainstream media. CNN’s Anderson Cooper later apologized for responding to the observation that the minority party seems to have lost its voice with the comment, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”

God and America

Aside from it being eternally linked in the public mind to an act often associated with sex and bondage, the Tea Party’s God issue also makes some critics nervous about the movement. Allied with the Tea Party is the 9.12 Project, which also arose in the spring of 2009. The brainchild of conservative radio host and Fox News pundit Glenn Beck, it sprinkles a little religion into the fiscal and constitutional mix.

Beck says that the nation needs to get back to where it was on the day after 9/11, when Time proclaimed that irony was dead, and it was a time “we were all just Americans, concerned about our country, concerned about each other,” says Cottage Grove 9.12 Project organizer Pam Duffy. “We’ve slowly gotten away from that,” she says.

“The idea behind the 9.12 Project is to get our country back,” she says, “back to the principles of our founding fathers.”

“The founding fathers, the majority of them, were very faith-based,” Duffy says, and she says in addition to political issues, “faith has brought a lot of people into it too.”

She adds, “It wasn’t that it was anything that was requirement per se, but just in general discussion it’s come out that a lot of people have a very strong faith.”

Duffy says the Cottage Grove chapter of the 9.12 project numbers 70 people who regularly attend its twice-a-month meetings, and 115 active members. Tea Parties meet potential political candidates and talk about local and national issues like the war, excessive taxes and potential limits on gun rights. “The government has been encroaching into areas where constitutionally they should not be,” she says.

A recent meeting in February attracted Commissioner Faye Stewart, Cottage Grove Mayor Gary Williams, and Springfield Mayor and congressional hopeful Sid Leiken to engage with the Tea Partiers, who Duffy says come from as far away as Roseburg and Eugene.

The 9.12 Project uses as its emblem Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” snake, but rather than the eight sections of the colonial woodcut representing the eight colonies, the 9.12 snake is cut into 10 sections. Nine of the sections represent the project’s nine principles:

1. America Is Good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

5. If you break the law, you pay the penalty. Justice is blind, and no one is above it.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Conveniently enough, if you’re not into the God thing, the Lane 9.12 website says you need only accept seven of the nine principles. The rattles on the tail of the snake represent the 9.12 Project’s 12 values: honesty, reverence, hope, thrift, humility, charity, sincerity, moderation, hard work, courage, personal responsibility and gratitude.

Everyday values that everyday people can get behind: That, the Tea Partiers say, is what the movement is all about and what attracts followers.

The “how I came to the Tea Party” stories have a bit of a Christian conversion element. Person after person tells a tale that sounds a bit like the “I once was lost, but now I’m found” story, which starts off with the teller complacent and willing to put up with the evils of world, until something happens to jar her into action, which redeems her and brings her to God — or in this case, the Tea Party.

“None of us were really political before,” says Duffy, who says she was a 30-year federal employee before retiring to Cottage Grove in 2003.

Tea for Lane County

Lela Trope, the woman who created 9.12 Lane, says it’s not that she wasn’t interested in politics before, because she was. “I’m one of those geeks who reads the Voters’ Pamphlet from front to back.”

For Trope it was a series of events, she says: Barack Obama’s election, listening to Glenn Beck and last year’s county jail beds debate “that was the tipping point,” she says. Her passion for the issue, she says, has caused a rift between her and her daughter, who she says sold out for Obama, but Trope continues in her work fighting against issues like big government taxation, illegal immigration and welfare. “Why is it in Oregon,” she asks, “we have so many children that can’t speak English?”

After being laid off from her job last year, she says, she used to lie in bed in the mornings, listening to Beck. Every morning he would tell listeners to get online and find a meet-up group for other like-minded people, she says. And every morning she failed to find a group. So she created one. The first meeting of Lane 9.12, which took place at The Cooler Bar and Grill in Eugene on March 12, 2009, attracted more than 100 people, she says. “This thing started from an absolute void.”

Trope says, “We looked around at each other at The Cooler, and saw all these people who came out in Eugene, Oregon, to be with other conservative people.”

Kerry Ferguson, who has worked with the Republican Party in the past, is starting a local chapter of FreedomWorks, a group with an agenda closely allied to the Tea Party. FreedomWorks is “an organization that works for lower taxes, less government and more freedom,” she says.

The group plans to start “attending community meetings like the City Council and the county commissioners’ meetings and that sort of thing, and voicing our concerns about local issues,” she says.

She too cites Beck as a catalyst for the movement. “I really think Glenn Beck brought a lot of it into perspective and said ‘This is what you need to do.’”

“He’s done a tremendous job of researching different issues,” she says of the strident political commentator.

Paul Krugman in The New York Times called FreedomWorks a fake grassroots group. Rather than grassroots, he wrote, FreedomWorks events are “AstroTurf.”

Trope takes umbrage to such criticism against the Tea Party movement and its ilk. She says there are no deep pockets behind her group. “The first several hundred dollars of this,” she says, “I thought my husband was going to go through the roof, but came out of my pocket.” She adds, “I still haven’t been reimbursed, but that’s OK.”

“I’ve been doing this before they came along, and I’ll be doing this after.”

She defends the movement against mainstream media, which she says “has really gone so far off track because they have wanted to believe that somebody’s teaching us things; somebody’s putting bugs in our ears; somebody’s been giving us money; somebody’s been orchestrating this.”

“This is where the media irritates the beans out of all of us,” she says. “I never heard of teabagging in my life! I’m still not sure what it is.”

She says the mainstream media “has tried so hard to say, ‘These people. What is wrong with these people?’”

Trope says, “My own mother-in-law said ‘You’re just doing this because Barack Obama’s a black man.’”

Limiting Government

Aaron Baker posts his “No Sugar Coated News” on YouTube as ADB024. His videos also show up on Tea Party pages and on local TV station KVAL’s website in the “YouNews” section. In one video he calls the Hult Center the place where “the adult Communists hang out,” and in another he calls Kitty Piercy “Eugene’s commie mayor,” while a third explains how Communists use “people of different skin color, the Jews, the gays, the women, the downtrodden, the drunks, the drug addicts, the criminals — these are all useful utensils of the revolution,” he says.

In an interview, soft-spoken Baker seems a far cry from the firebrand on YouTube. “You’ve seen the videos,” he says with an almost self-deprecating chuckle. He explains that it was a trip to the former Soviet Union to see the homeland of his immigrant wife that opened his eyes. “What really motivated people is realizing that government’s getting out of control,” he says.

“I am a strong supporter of the U.S. Constitution,” Baker says. And “isolationist policies when it comes to war,” he adds.

“The common ground,” among Tea Partiers, he says, “is we don’t want the government involved in our lives completely.”

That common ground revealed itself Feb. 15, when a Presidents’ Day Tea Party rally in Salem drew a largely white and upper-middle-aged crowd that included a large coterie of motorcyclists concerned about helmet and concealed carry gun laws.

Baker, like many of Lane County’s Tea Partiers, was against the recently passed Measures 66 and 67. Many of the Tea Party and 9.12 gatherings focused on trying to get those measures that raised taxes on wealthy Oregonians and Oregon businesses stopped.

Baker says that in the upcoming Republican primary race for the chance to run against long-time Congressman Peter DeFazio, he’s looking at former Constitution Party, now Republican, Jaynee Germond of Roseburg. He says she has some good points on “limited government and all that.”

“Who I am going to go for would be a Ron Paul candidate,” he says. Congressman Ron Paul is a Libertarian-oriented Republican from Texas who has earned the support of many Tea Partiers.

The Tea Party Candidate?

Although it’s not a political party in Oregon, Tea Partiers are looking for candidates to support in upcoming primaries.

Locally, some politicians who have had their names linked with the Tea Party include West Lane Commissioner candidate Jay Bozievich, who organized the 2009 Lane County Tax Day Tea Party; Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken, who attended a Cottage Grove 9.12 gathering, and Congressional candidate hopeful Jaynee Germond, who recently raffled off a .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun for $5 a ticket to raise money for her campaign.

Germond evokes a Tea Party ideal with her can-do attitude and history as a widowed single mom who didn’t ask for help. She’s anti-big government, she says, and worries about the infringement of American rights through legislation like the PATRIOT Act. She’s for term limits and wants to curb immigration. “The problem is that the jobs they’re doing, they’re not all entry level jobs; they’re taking jobs,” she says of undocumented workers. “They’re not citizens; right now we’re struggling to take care of citizens.”

“I’m all for legal immigration,” she says, but “illegal means criminal.”

The handgun raffle sold about 2,000 tickets, she says.

“I’m a fiscal conservative,” she says. “My family calls me cheap.”

Conservatives don’t like asking for money, Germond says. “This is a way for me to be able do some fundraising, yet give the donors a way to get something back in return for that. And I just thought that it would be a fun way to do it. It’s a nice gun.”

Her campaign is all volunteer-run, she says, “I pay nobody, and the benefit there is that people are invested; this is something they believe in,” Germond explains.

In addition to taking a stand against control, she says she is pro-logging. “We need to get back into the woods,” she says. “The fact is we need the jobs; they’re worth more than the timber funds are.”

She says she’s been working on figuring out “how to get county control of timber lands back to us.”

“It’s a crop,” she says, though with a longer growing season, “and should be used as such.”

Overall, Germond says, when it comes to politics, “I just encourage everyone to be informed.”

I went to http://www.youtube.com/user/adb024net and thier was nothing about TeaBaggers. It was just a guy talking about run down houses?

I'm sure I got title and number right. Is thier a misprint?

It's there SamBrin, use "adb024". And I'd like to thank the author of this post for pointing out a drastic problem that spans ALL political affiliations: the vitriol is running amok. That said, wouldn't it be nice to have a place we can just call each other names for hours on end? Oh wait, that place is YouTube, and the rancor runs in ALL directions.

Clowns from the right act-out ignorantly, clowns from the (not-really) progressive left react-out just as ignorantly. Like starting a Facebook fan page?!?!?! On which she actually posted this as her profile blurb?!?!?!

Just another mini-van driving soccer mom trying to make the world a better place, at least my corner of it.

From the online dictionary

Soccer mom:
1. a typical American suburban woman with school-age children.
2. An American mother living in the suburbs whose time is often spent transporting her children from one athletic activity or event to another.

A little more honest definition from the Urban Dictionary (remember she self-identified):

Soccer Mom:
1. A novelty political demographic denoting white middle and upper-middle class suburban American mothers of the post-baby boom generation.
2. ... Nevertheless, "soccer moms" cannot be adequately represented as being part of either a progressive or reactionary socioeconomic scheme; rather, they are something of a necessary evil of the post-industrial bourgeoisie, providing no real solutions for the problems that face contemporary life.

This is all circus, cynically played by both sides as much as possible to get political benefit and pull dollars and support out of the pockets of the credulous on both sides.

Just because a legislator "works hard" (whatever that actually means in the context of legislature that meets a month or two every year, other than working with cronies to mutual, selfish, benefit) has no bearing on whether he or she is a good leader. More often or not it actually means he or she really is not all that competent and has to work harder to get the same amount done. That characterizes virtually all of the Democrat majority and the Republican minority in the Oregon Legislature.

FYI: I will not be linking to Aaron Baker's YouTube channel, btw. There's no good reason to send traffic through to that garbage.

(But Carla does hope you'll go there, if the gratuitous exposure she has provided isn't enough to cause you to react emotionally and "pitch some campaign money their way".)

The teabag movement is one that both major parties should fear and work to discredit as quickly as possible. Any grassroots movement of concerned, involved citizens that seeks to hold government accountable is a huge threat to both the Dems and Repubs.

Every opportunity to tar the entire movement with a negative brush due to the actions of the most marginal members should be pounced on immediately. Keep up the good work.

Inserting the whole Weekly article in a comment was a bit over-the-top, but here's a good NY Times article that elucidates why the tea-party movement could only have started in the NW. Complete with hilarious tidbit that Ms. Carender's FIANCE voted for Obama.

THose comments are nothing worse than the tripe you put up on Blue ORegon Carla.

Roger, Are you kidding me? These comments were only a sampling of what was written and didn't include the comment about how "guns and ammo will come in handy if our Government doesn't get it straight soon" Regardless of anyone's political affiliation, this type of exchange has no place in politics. My 17 year old daughter found the video on You Tube and I had to explain to her that 1. We would be safe from these people (and I hope I am right) and 2. They have freedom of speech to say whatever they like even if it is repulsive, unkind and untrue.

We need to fight back. The way to do that is to support candidates that the Tea Party targets. Every time they step over the line (and that is very different than respectfully expressing political disagreements), we need to send money and volunteers to those targeted candidates.

At our next town hall, we will let these Tea Party guys know exactly how much money they helped us raise because of their video. I will not sink to their level but I am also not about to let their bad behavior go unchallenged. Let's Rain On Their Tea Party and use this as an opportunity to really piss them off and keep good Democrats in office.

My 17 year old daughter found the video on You Tube and I had to explain to her that 1. We would be safe from these people (and I hope I am right) and 2. They have freedom of speech to say whatever they like even if it is repulsive, unkind and untrue.

17? 17! and "Val" writes like she was talking to a 12-year-old? Great fears the Urban Dictionary could have it right:

Soccer mom:
Any parent (most commonly female) who seeks to impose their ethical and moral standards upon the rest of the world, justifying the suppression of all other views by claiming it is for the protection of their children. Soccer moms believe that they are all great parents, despite their inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for their children.

Also, in the TMI category from "Val"'s comment: How come this reads like the boring stereotype that the spawn are getting ready to swim out to sea (obligatory Oregon salmon reference), and "mini-van driving soccer mom" needs an outlet for elitist, overbearing tendencies? We've already got way too much of that egregiously uncivil behavior and attitudes of privileged soccer moms/dads in the Democratic Party in Oregon and nationally.

God, if this whole freak sideshow is at all representative of the "you're a ... - no, you're a ..." level of political debate in District 14. the lame-ass DPO and Lane Democratic Party really needs to find a real Democrat to run in the primary.

... the legislator involved with the threats has asked to have their information removed from the piece out of concern for their personal safety. I have redacted that information at their request.

Sheesh! You would think someone who has written as much as Carla would have a rudimentary knowledge of grammar.

Newcomer...I've read thousands of Carla's words, and they are routinely precise and well-chosen. She has more than a rudimentary grasp of grammar. In this specific instance, try thinking beyond grammar at the sentence level and look at the content. If Carla's chosen a gender neutral pronoun for use here, it is with good reason. Reread from the top of the post and think a little.

So Rep. Val Hoyle was teabagged by some of her constituents and now she's trying to make some money off the video?

Is Paris Hilton her campaign manager?

Newcomer...I've read thousands of Carla's words, and they are routinely precise and well-chosen. She has more than a rudimentary grasp of grammar. In this specific instance, try thinking beyond grammar at the sentence level and look at the content. If Carla's chosen a gender neutral pronoun for use here, it is with good reason. Reread from the top of the post and think a little.

"Hate"er. "Try thinking beyond the grammar at the sentence level ..." is typical of the superficiality of people like you and Carla. There is nothing intelligent from top to bottom in this thread. It is the most juvenile of political hackery, for no apparent purpose except fundraising.

The 2010 and 2012 elections are shaping up to be long overdue battles inside our party against the superficiality that Carla, most of Blue Oregon contributers, and evidently you, demonstrate. So if you don't like that, you'll just have to stew as the debate rages.

Why shouldn't she make money off of their video? Smart strategy to deal with some out of control extremists and bullies. If this kind of behavior is going on now, what will they do when the general campaign season starts? Best to start raising money early.

Also, what kind of a freak thinks that not wanting a 17 year old to see such nasty things about her mother constitutes "egregiously uncivil behavior and attitudes of privileged soccer moms/dads". Anything in the name of making political points I suppose. Either that or Sideshow Clowns has major mommy issues in addition to being being a total pervert.

Would you like a little cyanide with your tea?

It's not the ones who are "catapulting the propaganda" that are disconnected from reality - they know damned well what they are doing - it's all those pathetic white people who are swallowing this garbage whole! And let's face some sobering truths, shall we? Other than a small handful of blubbering Uncle Toms, they're almost entirely white. The disconnect between reality and delusion in this country is widespread and appalling. That would partially explain the political careers of people like Jeff Sessions and Michele Bachmann. People like them are only able to advance because of the stampeding ignorance of their constituents. In the land of the brain-dead, the half-wit is king.

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan Goshen NY

Didn't the left make a movie about assassinating GW? Didn't Sandra Bernhard make gang rape jokes about Sarah Palin? This list can go on and on.

Abusive commentary deleted--Editor

If you can take the hate, then don't dish it out.

Looks like "Why Not?" has some serious mental problems, or is just plain intellectually dishonest, and actually probably both:

1) Why shouldn't she make money off of their video? (etc): Attacks those who point out the truth this is nothing but the most juvenile of political tit-for-tat.

And just to crystal clear to filth like "Why Not?": No one is defending the Tea Party, especially the fringe elements here. This is about the behavior of those who claim to be the leaders on our side and who behave poorly. She is looking for money and votes, has her office currently because she was selected over other equally qualified candidates and not elected, and it's everyone's obligation as citizens in a representative democracy to scrutinize the quality of people who seek money and votes.

As is usually the case, the pressure of random political events frequently is more telling about character than the stage of Oregon party politics and the legislative session where everything is scripted to optimize public relations benefit. A lot of politicians do many of the right things (meaning the deserving incidentally benefit) for all the wrong, condescending, disrespectful, selfish reasons. Doesn't mean THEY are good, honorable leaders. It means they can't be trusted, and therefore need the highest scrutiny.

2) Also, what kind of a freak (etc): Totally and intentionally misrepresents what was written as an attempt to justify the strange picture "Val"/Hoyle and has chosen to present of herself.

The point, bluntly made for those as stupid and intellectually dishonest as "Why Not?", is that this is about the picture Hoyle has presented of herself of how disrespectfully she views her fellow citizens regardless of political viewpoint. She created the Facebook page in which she cynically self-identified by the even the extreme of a selfish, vapid cultural stereotype. She did that in response to idiotic material on YouTube. That alone should be a tipoff we are watching people act out the psychosis of the narcissistic social media.

Hoyle went on to live up to that stereotype she chose by gratuitously using her child --- part of her personal, private life nobody needs to know about (remember how Democrats are always saying leave the kids out of it?) --- as a condescending, morally dishonest way of furthering her political tactics. Incidentally, thereby lending support to the stereotype of herself she chose. Sounds so Rovian.

We don't know the genuine level of intent on her part. Even that may be scripted to appeal to the demographic segments she cynically calculates will get her to 50% + 1 vote in her district. This is the picture she has chosen to present of herself and she is trying to raise money from it, which pretty much makes her the stereotype of a typical, inauthentic, politician. In a quick web search one first-person account notes she comes from a family of elected officials. So she may have the best tutors. We know that leads to a sense of entitlement and the right to condescend to others.

Of course, at the bottom line, this is exactly the problem the Democratic Party Candidates and flaks like Carla and "Why Not?" whose values are out of step with authentic Democratic party values, and who have quite relevant personal flaws they may even PROJECT onto others as their way of attacking. The bottom line is that if all Hoyle has to offer is attacking a stereotype like the Tea Party by presenting herself as a selfish, vapid stereotype, she has little to offer in terms of intelligent, competent, leadership.

Frankly, I'm also quickly loosing respect for the people, integrity, and merit of the Emerge program of which, I discovered in my quick web search for info about Hoyle's political merits, she is hailed as a proud product.

By the way, although it is not noted in most of the stories I found about Hoyle, and it should be because it is relevant. She hails in 1999 from New Hampshire. A state with Town Meeting form of local government. Her political upbringing, as it were, (her father apparently was an elected state legislator) is rooted in a very different relationship between the legislator and the government. Town Meetings also can encourage the small minded, conformist, thinking of the small town where ostracism is a important aspect of social control. Not incompatible with the thinking patterns of the "soccer mom" stereotype. Since Hoyle was selected and not elected, this campaign is important since District 14 voters will have their first chance to express if and how Hoyle represents their values, and we will all learn from that.

here's the splc "hate map"

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map

If turnabout is fair play, then in the patented Carla Axtman spirit of political civility I guess the Tea Partiers should be free to call opposition to their ideas c*cksuckery or some similarly charming term.

Folks who express their ideas in personal attacks either:

a) do not have clear, constructive ideas to share b) harbor the mistaken belief they are actually persuading anybody c) simply enjoy making the statements, no matter how ridiculous it makes them look and sound

They have every right to state their ideas, just as I have every right to ignore and laugh at them.

No side has the monopoly on virtue or depravity, imho.

As a Republican, this is totally despicable to me, and I'm ashamed the tea-bagger movement even exists.

I have the utmost respect for those who serve in office, on both sides. I have voted for people in both parties - including Ben Westlund. This isn't how politics is supposed to be.

Thanks for pointing this out, Carla. If I lived in the districts of these legislators, I'd be more than happy to vote for them or support them monetarily to get the tea-baggers to shut-up and go away.

While those comments are obviously vile and offensive, I honestly have a hard time getting worked up about YouTube comments anymore. The Youtube comments section is, to put it mildly, "a wretched hive of scum and villainy". Anonymity + the culture of Youtube pretty much means that people feel free to say the most hateful things they can think of (I use the term "think" loosely -- "b*tch" and "ho" aren't exactly the insults of intellectual giants). I doubt any of those people are either (1) a real threat or (2) willing to/capable of saying those things in real life to someone's face.

I would be much, much more concerned about the threatening letters sent to the legislator.

Val is an atypical politician and she is a perfect fit for her district (which happens to include a lot of soccer moms). She's worked in business and for the NGOs. She understands what works on a common sense level. Chris and Nancy also have a focused and moderate approach. None of these folks are even approaching socialism.

Also, if anyone knows Val, they know that her skin is incredibly thick. Especially when the comments come from ignorance. However, a few of those youtubers (probably 15 year olds) crossed the line of what is publicly decent. "Aaron" should take them down. As for the other legislator who is receiving death threats, that is very troubling.

And finally, Val's primary qualification as a "soccer mom" is that she wears jeans and white keds on the weekends. Other than that, she's a working woman from a blue collar family with great kids and a really big husband. She also happens to be politically astute. (and in terms of roots, she grew up on the South Side of BOSTON which, last time I checked, was not in New Hampshire)

Don't let it mess with your St. Patrick's Day. And I'll throw some money in the Troll Fund on behalf of "sideshow clowns".

James Mattiace Kingdom of Morocco

Delta,

Let me get this straight: Someone made a movie about GW being assassinated and Sandra Bernhard crossed the line and said something offensive and unacceptable and since they were probably Democrats, it is OK to use graphic personal attacks and physical threats against our local legislators who are Democrats for daring to participate in a town hall meeting. Really?

Whatever your political point of view, people have no right to swear at, insult, and physically threaten others.

I was at that Town Hall, and some of the "Teabaggers" were totally rude. The guy doing the filming was threatening. What do they think they'll accomplish?

They just turn most people off. However, there are enough people hurting economically looking for scapegoats, who find it easy to just attack elected officials. This doesn't help solve the real problems we have like: good jobs that don't wreck the environment improving education

So these guys should either help, or leave those of us who are honestly trying to do some good alone.

So the Blue Moron Corp has piped up again. No sense in re-litigating the matter, especially since freaks like paulie apparently have never heard of research indices, primary sources, and edited journalism (ie. newpapers) anyway. And Carla's issues are evident.

"james mattiace" from "The Kingdom of Morocco" seems to live in an alternate reality. Or he may just be a really accomplished pathological liar. No way to know for sure, but for the record: Edward Russo reported in an October 2006 Eugene Register Guard article that Val Hoyle "came from ... Nashua, New Hampshire" where her father at some point served in NH's whacky General Court (the name for their legislature, the House has over 400 elected members in a state of a little over a million). He went on to report her claim she volunteered in 1976 in Udall's New Hampshire primary campaign, which apparently would have made her about 11. Finally, Russo reported that she moved to Boston to go to college, which suggests she may have even moved back to NH after college. I could find no corrections to the story in the databases I checked BEFORE I even commented when I looked before making my comment. I looked for an authoritative auto-bio but she doesn't even have a campaign webpage. Her legislative bio is a pathetic joke.

Val already got more than the benefit of the doubt just in that search for primary sources in response to the SHE introduced HERSELF publicly on her money-bomb fan page: Just another mini-van driving soccer mom trying to make the world a better place, at least my corner of it. She asked for money and support. Well only a Blue Oregon ignoramus would do that without doing a little independent checking. And it only took a little genuine research to raise questions about Val Hoyle's values and merits.

It's also pretty damn funny how a lot of lame Blue Oregonians can dish it out, but start whining like babies when their merit and their BS is challenged.

Not only sexist, but the teabaggers are homophobic to boot. Cf. the overwhelming urge to refer to "Obama jamming/ramming/shoving healthcare down our throats", Limbaugh talking in mock fear about "bending over and grabbing your ankles".....

And racist and xenophobic. We've had three attacks on our soil by right-wing terrorists who were American citizens since Obama's inauguration (shooting at the Holocaust museum, murder of Dr. George Tiller, and the plane crashed into the IRS in Austin). This crowd openly brings weapons to public events.

So sexist, yes, but I think anyone who is not a straight white Christian Republican has reason to be concerned.

Yes, it's true: Sandra Bernhard did spout some "joke" about Sarah Palin being gang-raped by a bunch of black men. "The lovely Bernhard" lost a speaking engagement at a battered women's shelter because of that.

The vast majority of tea party protestors are patriotic Americans. The teeny-tiny amount of hate-filled nuts that have infected the tea party movement pale in comparison to the not-so-teeny-tiny amount of anti-war protestors who engage in the same crap. Behold:

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

I hate to feed the troll, but how exactly does the fact that Val lived in New Hampshire and Massachusetts "raise questions about her values and merits" (Or is it the fact that her father served in the NH legislature? Or that she may have volunteered on a presidential campaign as a kid?)?

During the 8 years of Bush it was common place at every anti-war rally to threaten Bush with Death - and there were never any arrests that I recall.

Here's just a small sampling of all the left wing nut progressive hate that is easily available online for the left-wing viewing pleasure:

"Kill Terrorists bomb there house kill bush bomb his fucking house"

"Save mother earth - Kill Bush"

"Hang Bush for war crimes"

"Bush is the disease, death is the cure"

"Im here to kill Bush (Shoot me)"

"Bush - the only dope worth shooting"

"Death to extremist christian terrorist pig Bush!"

"Death to worlds #1 Terrorist pig Bush & his sheep"

De-capitation signs, hanging signs of Bush, Bush burnings

The death threats leveled against Bush, pale in comparison to anything the teabaggers have done.

So Suck it up, Carla.

Carla, Make no mistake - threatening anyone, legislator or not, is crap. I don't condone it either. I am just saying that death threats from the left were routine for 8 years of Bush and I don't recall anyone being held accountable for it, or the left not encouraging it.

Pat, here's a quote from a Nobel Peace Prize winner:

"Right now, I would love to kill George (W.) Bush", blaming him for the deaths of children, particularly in the Middle East...I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."[6]

Here's the Nobel "Peace" prize link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Williams_(Nobel_laureate)

Here's a death threat Kerry made (left wing humor!): http://feedblog.org/2006/10/08/john-kerry-threatens-to-kill-president-bush-on-bill-maher/

Left Wing nut case: http://neef2606.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/threat1.jpg

Craig Kilborn - snippers wanted: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/kilborn1.html

Then there's the Air Amerika bush gun shot skit: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1426697

Left wing family movie night: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23365246-president-bush-assassinated-in-new-tv-docudrama.do

Here's a bunch of death threat photos and links to share with your friends and family: http://www.binscorner.com/pages/d/death-threats-against-bush-at-protests-i.html

You get the idea. The fact that some teabagger posted a threat - pales in comparison to the threats that have been levied against 8 years of Bush.

"...Delta...again you provide no links..."

I got this one, Delta.

Folks, I DID provide the link! Type this link into your computer and prepare to be shocked:

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

You got that, ladies and gentlemen? The examples Delta cited are not anonymous blog comments. They are actual protest signs. I recognized them immediately.

"Delta...I attended many-anti-war rallies...and did not see such signage..." - Carla

Hey Carla, I was in downtown Portland observing the Inagauration Day protest January 2005 (I was with the counter-protestors), and I counted at least 3 "Kill Bush" signs. I completely lost count of all the "F Bush" signs. One of the "F Bush" signs even had a drawing of a naked woman in a Hustler magazine style of spread-eagle pose - and it was being held by a girl who looked like she wasn't even 15 years old!

Let's get this straight: The vast majority of tea party protestors do so lawfully and peacefully. The vast majority of anti-war protestors also do so lawfully and peacefully, although some cities (Portland, Seattle, San Francisco) have had a definite problem with anarchists mucking things up - vandalism, window-smashing, Bush supporters getting spat upon, smashing and keying cars, etc.

Whether some lunatic pulls this crap from the left-wing or the right-wing, it should be condemned. And we are condemning it.

I hate to feed the troll, but how exactly does the fact that Val lived in New Hampshire and Massachusetts "raise questions about her values and merits" (Or is it the fact that her father served in the NH legislature? Or that she may have volunteered on a presidential campaign as a kid?)?

Julie, I am going to assume this was not a serious question, since otherwise one would have to conclude you, like most Blue Oregonians, have the brains and attention span of flies who've just discovered a fresh cow pie. Exactly where did you find that particular chain of reasoning in anything that was written? Did you even read what was written?

I'm going to suggest you review what was written, starting with:

She (Val) asked for money and support. Well only a Blue Oregon ignoramus would do that without doing a little independent checking.

That started with going to the link Carla so helpfully provided to Val's money-bomb fan page:

Just another mini-van driving soccer mom trying to make the world a better place, at least my corner of it.

That is a statement of values, and in fact an indication of her political calculations and judgement.

The point, bluntly made for those as stupid and intellectually dishonest as "Why Not?", is that this is about the picture Hoyle has presented of herself of how disrespectfully she views her fellow citizens regardless of political viewpoint. She created the Facebook page in which she cynically self-identified by the even the extreme of a selfish, vapid cultural stereotype. She did that in response to idiotic material on YouTube. That alone should be a tipoff we are watching people act out the psychosis of the narcissistic social media.

You can follow the argument from there. Or maybe you can't, and in that case it's not worth the extra effort.

I showed Val's money-bomb fan page to several solid, working-class, Democrats (men and women) and asked whether this motivated them to support her. I'll leave it to your imagination what they said, and I'm sure even that won't come close to what they said AFTER I told them she's claiming to represent all that is good about Democrats. And most especially against the fringe of the Tea Partiers. I can say they said they didn't actually didn't see much difference between her and them, she and they were all just jackasses acting out.

One last thing for you:

A lot of politicians do many of the right things (meaning the deserving incidentally benefit) for all the wrong, condescending, disrespectful, selfish reasons. Doesn't mean THEY are good, honorable leaders. It means they can't be trusted, and therefore need the highest scrutiny.

So decide for yourself the answer to your asinine uestion.

Heh, say something about the teabaggery bunch and the idjits crawl out of the wood work. Idjits? OK T axed E nough A lready is one of the funniest things going. Idjits don't recognize the lowest tax rate in half a century is TEA. Once you start there, these results are inevitible. delta and scott are good examples.

Whether some lunatic pulls this crap from the left-wing or the right-wing, it should be condemned. And we are condemning it.

Agreed. I think that is the point of the story, we should all condemn inappropriate behavior and threats. Those that do not condemn this behavior, by their silence condone it and encourage its growth. This particular fringe is quite dangerous as they are making specific threats to people they actually have access to. This is not a story about how people are threatening Obama because if it were the threats to Bush would be comparing apples to apples. This is about local people going to town halls and trying to intimidate our local legislators through rude, demeaning behavior, threats and intimidation which is quite different.

Sideshow - you clearly have issues with this candidate because you have taken deep offense at her self identification as a soccer mom then somehow have piled on that being from NH and MA, volunteering on campaigns at a young age, having a political family background and raising money for her race are somehow things that make her unqualified to run office. Your logic is flawed and tiresome. Like the people who made the nasty comments on You Tube, you are hiding behind a fake name and throwing insults out from the safety of your secrecy. At least she is willing to discuss her opinions in an open forum and listen to other people. She has got way more courage than you do.

Sideshow - you clearly have issues (blah, blah, typical lame-ass "bluish" Oregonian boring idiocy omitted)

No Connor, your smug misrepresentation of the argument actually given demonstrates your ignorance, intellectual dishonesty, and moral vacuity. Courage has little to do with the motivations and actions of politicians who posture themselves as selfish, vapid stereotypes. And then live up to that stereotype. Everything she has said demonstrates little genuine leadership capability, and simply hanging around a crony-ridden, dysfunctional system until one rises up the ranks demonstrates nothing about leadership. Her entire schtick in this episode is throwing out blue meat (which is what red meat looks like after it spoils) to a credulous, mentally and morally challenged base. As I said:

She created the Facebook page in which she cynically self-identified by the even the extreme of a selfish, vapid cultural stereotype. She did that in response to idiotic material on YouTube. That alone should be a tipoff we are watching people act out the psychosis of the narcissistic social media.

That alone is evidence of a serious question whether she, and whoever she is working with, have the intelligence and judgement to be even close to the kind of capable, competent leader we need at this time. As it would if any other candidate performs in this same manner.

For those who are a little more intellectually honest and curious, I repeat the link to the NY Times article that documents how the Tea Party sideshow started in the NW and which illustrates how this Hoyle money-bomb stunt with the help of Blue Oregon peanut gallery pretty much are just clowns in the same ring.

(Oh, and by the way, not only do the courts disagree with you about anonymity, every vote we cast is anonymous. So if you're saying that the politicians you support only want votes that are identified to the voter, please make that argument here.)

Since Val and her handlers have embraced the social media as a propaganda tool in their campaign, I'll leave you with a repeat of this definition of the stereotype Val has embraced from the Urban Dictionary, another delightful little social media site:

Soccer Mom:
1. A novelty political demographic denoting white middle and upper-middle class suburban American mothers of the post-baby boom generation.
2. ... Nevertheless, "soccer moms" cannot be adequately represented as being part of either a progressive or reactionary socioeconomic scheme; rather, they are something of a necessary evil of the post-industrial bourgeoisie, providing no real solutions for the problems that face contemporary life.

Carla is and always will be, at heart, a troll seeking knee-jerk reactions and attention on the net. Once you realize that, you just sort of skim over her posts and move on to more important things. A lot of people have yet to see it.

Okay… so you have an inexplicable hatred for the term “soccer mom.” Got it. And you don’t like that she started a Facebook page (social media in 2010… it’s not just for the kids anymore).

On at least one point, though, we could have a reasonable debate (that is, if you could present your ideas coherently, without going off into tangents about where she has lived or her activities when she was 11): is it appropriate for her to use this incident to help raise money?

Personally, I don’t have any issue with it. The Tea Party targeted her (or rather, one very active Tea Party member targeted her and other piled on in an offensive manner). If they continue to target her, it could very well become an issue for her campaign (she’s running against the Republican mayor of Junction City). Campaigns depend on money. Therefore, donating money is an appropriate response if you think the Tea Party’s actions might hurt her chances in November. I can see how others might feel differently, but, frankly, campaigns don’t run on sunshine and rainbows (no matter how much we want them to). Candidates have to fundraise. And they have to fundraise even more if they think that there’s going to be some sort of organized smear campaign against them.

BTW, is this pure sand in the face? I specifically pointed out a few days back, how you hold TEA organizations responsible for the behavior of anyone remotely associated with them, yet give yourselves a total bye with what gets posted to BO. This goes beyond just ignoring the point. It's like you made sure to illustrate that you're proud of the hypocrisy.

It's my understanding that Baker should have the ability to delete this kind of ugly and nasty crap from the page. He's obviously reading it because he's responding to other comments. Apparently this kind of misogyny is just fine with Mr. Baker. Pretty cowardly stuff.

Yeah. Really sucks when people don't edit appropriately. Laziness, however, is endemic. Or is this not "nasty crap"? Posted by: anon | Jan 17, 2010 6:45:32 PM

Hey Steve, Don't pick your nose with your hook. You might rip your face off!

Let me guess. When you left it, it was educational, but when AB left it, it was promoting the attitude? The people that made the comments aren't even TEA protesters. If their opinions reflect on his blog- and they DO- then why don't all the link spam you leave up reflect on Blue Oregon?

Clever of Carla to post YouTube comments and then take screen shots of them.

Did you hear Kari call her a "brassy babe" today on KPOJ? I don't see how that is any different. I'm sick of so called progressive men being just as sexist as those they accuse.