There has been a Karl Rove sighting, and he is apparently turning his angry little brain toward blogs like this one.

Karl Rove ripped into liberal bloggers at a web politics conference this week, assailing the "angry kooks" on the "nutty fringe of political life" who have seized "inexpensive and easily accessible" platforms to upend public debate. Ever the strategist, Rove also emphasized that he is a "fan of many blogs." So how does he know which ones are good? Apparently blogs affiliated with the liberal netroots are the problem:

My point is not that liberals swear publicly more often than conservatives. That may be true, but that's not my point [...] It is that the netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion.

Rove's attack fits with the Republicans' long-term strategy to discredit the netroots, marginalize bloggers and pressure Democratic politicians to avoid their own web activists. The idea is to blunt the obvious fundraising, organizing and energizing benefits of liberal web activism by isolating it from Democratic leadership and the progressive establishment in general. That is why Republicans aim to morph liberal Internet activism into a "scandal" whenever possible, from random blog comments to the MoveOn Petraus ad to the feigned outrage over John Edwards' campaign bloggers. In fact, the Edwards dust-up in February traces Rove's new attack quite closely. A Republican operative famous for unethical hardball (Bill Donahue) hypocritically attacks the "vitriol" of bloggers, focusing exclusively on liberals in order to pressure naive Democrats -- not improve public discourse. Then important people grow very "concerned" about an outbreak of "dirty politics" on the left. In February, the bloggers resigned from the campaign; this week, Rove is pushing a broader narrative for the media, not trying to actually get a specific person fired.

It does not take a "Rovian brain" to recognize that the what the Republicans are really upset about is a sources of information and dissension that they cannot control. Don't forget that "controlling the message" is one of the pillars of the Republican platform.

They have no way to control what I put in this post.

I am not supported by advertisers, or threatened by low traffic numbers.

I am currently experiencing a reduction in traffic, as I have in the past, but if even six people came here to read these pages, those six people would read my REAL opinion and concerns with no pandering or sensationalistic posts designed to increase traffic for traffics sake.

And if my little blog does nothing more then scare Karl Rove I will consider it a success.