Bloodthirsty Liberal

Kidz will be kidz

Businesses in Northeast and Southeast Portland were damaged overnight and the vandals explained their actions in e-mails, police said.

The vandalism comes ahead of a planned Occupy Portland march and rally in Portland on Wednesday afternoon as part of the Shut Down the Corporations Day of Action. The event is also known as the F29 march and organizers said they will be focusing on corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Police said at about 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, a U.S. Bank branch near S.E. Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard and S.E. Main Street had windows broken out and the ATM was damaged. Police said rocks were found inside and outside the building.

Portland is hip; they have great coffee and restaurants; they have more body tatoos and piercings than any other city in America… in short, it’s kind of a yucky place.

- Aggie

Can this be real?

Nothing like civilized, fair, balanced, thoughtful media with my morning coffee.

- Aggie

For breakfast this morning, let’s have some SMUG™ with our coffee.

What’s your favorite thing about the Iowa caucuses? – M. Berry

When they’re over. As the Iowa-born writer Bill Bryson once apologetically wrote, “I come from Des Moines, somebody had to.” Bryson added — understatedly — that Des Moines was “the most powerful hypnotic known to man.” Not that you’d know it from the amount of column inches his seedy little home state generates. For roughly two years out of every quadrennial, groveling politicians, not to mention journalists and the electorate at large, have to pretend to give a rip what Iowans think. Which is unfortunate, as even Iowans don’t know what Iowans think. I’m not saying they’re dumb. But in the nineties, Iowa experienced the second largest brain drain of any state in the nation, with its young educated classes fleeing in droves. Economists say it was to find better employment or higher education opportunities. But one could hardly blame the evacuees for just wanting to get away from other rubber-necking, carb-loading, undecided Iowa voters.

Even as late as this past Saturday, a Des Moines Register poll showed 41 percent of Iowans could still be persuaded to change their minds. This, after every man, woman, and child in the state had benefited from 17 or 18 opportunities apiece to eat pancakes, have their photos snapped in front of butter sculptures, or to otherwise be sucked up to, back-slapped or belly-scratched in person by or with every single candidate, plus their spouses. If you don’t know what you think of a candidate after watching Marcus Bachmann deep-throat a foot-long corn dog just to impress you, then maybe you don’t deserve first-in-the-nation privileges.

They’re so obnoxious… not the Iowans, the media. The point is that Iowans are dumb. Anyone who doesn’t suck-up to the Left state of mind is an idiot. Right?

If you’re interested, you can keep reading. I’m not and I didn’t.

- Aggie

Inspiration from Agatha Christie

Ever wanted to fly an airplane? Sew a quilt? Write a detective novel?

Bet you can’t!

Was there ever a writer who, on the face of it, looked less destined for literary immortality than Agatha Christie? Born Agatha Miller, naturally shy and brought up in a cosseted Edwardian home in the seaside town of Torquay, she toddled in the shadow of older siblings. (“Agatha’s so terribly slow” was the family consensus on Christie as a child.)

In adolescence, Christie enjoyed reading mysteries — Sherlock Holmes and Anna Katharine Green’s “The Leavenworth Case” were particular favorites — and, egged on by her beloved mother, she experimented with writing romances and other ladylike fiction. But it was not until her much more dazzling older sister Madge (who fancied herself the budding writer in the family) issued a dare that Agatha stepped daintily into her life’s work. In her recently reissued autobiography, Christie recalls the momentous conversation in which she told Madge that she “should like to try [her] hand at a detective story”:

“‘I don’t think you could do it,’ said Madge. ‘They are very difficult to do. I’ve thought about it.’

“‘I should like to try.’

“‘Well, I bet you couldn’t,’ said Madge.”

Isn’t that wonderful?

- Aggie

Another school year, another explosion of Jew hatred by a professor, this time directed at an Israeli Bedouin who has become a high level Israeli diplomat.

The focus is back on a Kent State faculty member with former ties to a jihadist website.

Julio Pino’s shout of “Death to Israel” at a public lecture by a former Israeli diplomat “was not surprising,” said Jennifer Chestnut, executive director of the Jewish organization Hillel at Kent State, who attended the speech.

“If he will say this in public, what will he say in the confines of his own classroom when it’s just him at the podium?” she asked.

The KSU student news site KentWired reported that Pino, 50, disrupted the Tuesday night lecture by Ishmael Khaldi, who rose from living in a Bedouin tent to the top ranks in the Israeli government.

Pino asked Khaldi how Israel could justify providing aid to countries such as Turkey with “blood money” from the deaths of Palestinians, according to the student website.

The two traded barbs, then Pino stormed out and Khaldi fielded more questions from the 100 people in the audience.

“Is this what that professor is telling you?” he asked at one point. “It is my responsibility to tell you the truth and build relationships.”

Chestnut, the head of Hillel, said Pino distributed anti-Israel fliers in the back of the room and had done so at other events on campus in the past.

Pino, an associate professor of history, could not be reached for comment.

The native of Cuba and convert to Islam has been a lightning rod on campus for a decade.

In 2002, he wrote a column in the Daily Kent Stater eulogizing an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber. In 2005 and 2006, he wrote letters to the student-run paper criticizing American policy in the Muslim world.

One letter from Pino later appeared on a jihadist blog, www.?global.war.bloghi.com, to which he told the KSU administration that he had contributed. The website no longer exists under that name.

“You attack, and continue to attack, us everywhere,” read both the letter and submission to the website. “The ill done to the Muslim nations must be requited. The Muslim child does not cry alone; the Muslim woman does not cry alone; and the Muslim man is already at your gates.’’

The university fired his department head in 2007 when he allowed Pino to take a fully paid, six-week professional leave to the United Arab Emirates to learn Arabic.

The university said John Jameson did not follow university protocol in approving Pino’s travel. Jameson said officials were anxious about further bad publicity about Pino and yanked his title and ordered Pino back to campus in retribution.

In 2009, the U.S. Secret Service acknowledged that it was investigating Pino “as an individual who came to our attention who needed to be interviewed.”

Resident agent in charge David Lee said then that officials went to Pino’s home in the “ongoing” investigation and declined to elaborate.

In the latest dust-up, KSU student and event organizer Evan Gildenblatt of Cincinnati, in a guest editorial Thursday in the student media, criticized Pino for abusing his powerful influence over students.

The column by Gildenblatt, who is majoring in conflict resolution and minoring in Jewish studies, called for more understanding between people of different faiths.

“He came with a premeditated plan to disrupt the program, and completely disregarded one of the main messages of the evening: peaceful coexistence through respectful dialogue,” Gildenblatt told the Beacon Journal.

University President Lester A. Lefton released a statement Thursday afternoon saying that Pino treated Khaldi “in a way which I find reprehensible, and an embarrassment to our university.”

Lefton, who is Jewish, said he found Pino’s words “deplorable and his behavior deeply troubling.”

“We hope that our faculty will always model how best to combine passion for one’s position with respect for those with whom we disagree,” Lefton said.

KSU spokeswoman Emily Vincent said the university has received about two dozen complaints about Pino in the past two days.

The Beacon Journal received more than a dozen emailed complaints from various parts of the country in less than an hour Thursday evening.

Pino has tenure, or virtual lifetime employment, in his $73,631 job.

They fired the Department Chair for allowing Pino to go to Saudi Arabia and study Arabic? What are the chances they’ll fire this bigot? What would happen to a faculty member who stood up and shouted Death to Cuba! or Death to Saudi Arabia? Would that individual have his or her job the next morning?

Doorbells ringing… time to run up the dentists’ bills.

- Aggie

I would be outraged about this but for one thing: who the [bleep] is Orlando Jones?

Celebrities have been known to post tasteless tweets on Twitter, but critics are slamming comedian Orlando Jones for crossing the line when he tweeted that liberals should “Kill Sarah Palin.”

Following the death of Muammar Qaddafi, the MADtv star tweeted, “Libyan Rebels kill Gaddafi, if American liberals want respect they better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin (:”

Despite his addition of a smiley face emoticon, the Twitter community did not react well to Orlando’s post.

Whoever he is, he’s a moron if that’s supposed to be a smiley face emoticon.

After receiving widespread criticism for his hateful tweet, the comedian spent the better part of Tuesday attempting to defend himself.

“My tweet was farcical not funny or a call to action. 100 bucks 2 the 1st person who can count the # of Palin jokes about killing Democrats(:,” Jones tweeted.

A comedian! Oh-h-h… Farce—I get it. Ha-ha. And I have a rough count of the number of Palin jokes about killing Democrats: zero, more or less.

And get your [bleeping] punctuation together, man!

But when given more space, his eloquence is inarguable.

“My job as an artist is to hold up a mirror to society. I do not decide how people feel or react to that. My tweet hit a nerve. That’s good. The fact that is has taken precedent over the serious issues that face us is not good. That’s media outlets vying for attention and ad dollars.

“Was it my best line? No. It would be great if those individuals who are genuinely outraged redirected that energy toward the greater good. Any anger directed at me and my right to free speech is an absolute waste of time. I am not a statesman. My comments reflect no political affiliation. It’s just me being me, in a world that will never comfortably mix political correctness with artistic expression. For that, I offer no apologies, excuses or wisdom.”

We weren’t expecting wisdom, Orlando. Not after what we’ve already read.

One of the hardest things people find to do is to say “sorry”. It’s not an issue of free speech or artistic expression, it’s about saying you’re sorry for exhorting people to kill someone. How hard is that? More important, why wouldn’t you do that, even if you didn’t mean it—especially if you didn’t mean it?

He is right that he’s a waste of time. But calling liberals out on their rampant hate speech is not. Lives are at stake.

PS: IMDB tells me how out of touch I am with the brilliant career of Mr. Jones.

It has been my contention for a long time that the hatred between the Left and the Right in this country started with the Bork hearings. Apparently, I’m not alone.

I bring up Bork not only because Sunday is a convenient anniversary. His nomination battle is also a reminder that our poisoned politics is not just about Republicans behaving badly, as many Democrats and their liberal allies have convinced themselves. Democrats can be — and have been — every bit as obstructionist, mean-spirited and unfair.

I’ll take it one step further. The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. For years afterward, conservatives seethed at the “systematic demonization” of Bork, recalls Clint Bolick, a longtime conservative legal activist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the angry verb “to bork,” which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. When Republicans borked the Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright less than two years later, there wasn’t a trace of remorse, not after what the Democrats had done to Bork. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust — the line from Bork to today’s ugly politics is a straight one.

It is, to be sure, completely understandable that the Democrats wanted to keep Bork off the court. Lewis Powell, the great moderate, was stepping down, which would be leaving the court evenly divided between conservatives and liberals. There was tremendous fear that if Bork were confirmed, he would swing the court to the conservatives and important liberal victories would be overturned — starting with Roe v. Wade.

But liberals couldn’t just come out and say that. “If this were carried out as an internal Senate debate,” Ann Lewis, the Democratic activist, would later acknowledge, “we would have deep and thoughtful discussions about the Constitution, and then we would lose.” So, instead, the Democrats sought to portray Bork as “a right-wing loony,” to use a phrase in a memo written by the Advocacy Institute, a liberal lobby group.

The character assassination began the day Bork was nominated, when Ted Kennedy gave a fiery speech describing “Robert Bork’s America” as a place “in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters,” and so on. It continued until the day the nomination was voted down; one ad, for instance, claimed, absurdly, that Bork wanted to give “women workers the choice between sterilization and their job.”

Conservatives were stunned by the relentlessness — and the essential unfairness — of the attacks. But the truth is that many of the liberals fighting the nomination also knew they were unfair. That same Advocacy Institute memo noted that, “Like it or not, Bork falls (perhaps barely) at the borderline of respectability.” It didn’t matter. He had to be portrayed “as an extreme ideological activist.” The ends were used to justify some truly despicable means.

Today, of course, the court has a conservative majority, and liberal victories are, indeed, being overturned. Interestingly, Bolick says Bork’s beliefs would have made him a restraining force. Theodore Olson, who served as solicitor general under George W. Bush, also pointed out that after Bork, nominees would scarcely acknowledge that they had rich and nuanced judicial philosophies for fear of giving ammunition to the other side. Those philosophies would be unveiled only after they were on the court.

Mostly, though, the point remains this: The next time a liberal asks why Republicans are so intransigent, you might suggest that the answer lies in the mirror.

So true. But what isn’t said is that we up the ante every few years. Who can forget the ads of George W. Bush morphing into Adolf Hitler? Who can forget Sarah Palin hanging in effigy? And who among us hasn’t been called naive or even stupid by “friends” who disagree with our politics? Politics is no more than loving the Yankees or the Red Sox and the concern for the well-being of our country is a charming, old-fashioned memory.

- Aggie

What goes around comes around, boys.

If the Republicans are able to take the Senate in 2012, I will be here reminding enraged liberals that they started the games with the Senate rules.

In a stunning turn of events Thursday night where tempers appeared to boil over on the floor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and many Senate Democrats, through a complicated bit of legislative jiu-jitsu, managed to change the rules of the body, in a manner similar to the so-called “nuclear option.”

The vote centered around a procedural maneuver known as “a motion to suspend Senate rules.”

The tactic was an attempt by the minority to force what would have been a symbolic vote on President Obama’s jobs plan. It would have required 67 votes to pass, a target Senate Republicans were unlikely to meet.

However, upset by what he felt was an effort to filibuster by amendment a bill dealing with alleged currency manipulation by the Chinese that had passed a 60 vote threshold twice, Reid ruled the motion out of order. The chair, which is also controlled by Democrats, agreed. McConnell objected to that ruling and asked for a vote to decide the issue. That vote fell in Reid’s favor by a mostly party line vote of 51-48 (Ben Nelson, D-Nev., voted with the Republicans)

As a result of Thursday’s maneuvering, the minority will no longer be able to offer such motions after cloture has been invoked. In the past, the measure has been used by the minority to delay proceedings or force tough votes for the majority.

No motion to suspend has actually reached the 67 vote threshold since 1941.

Republicans were apoplectic that Reid brought a bazooka to a knife fight.

“You were going to win on this bill — you didn’t need to jam us,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., “America doesn’t need less debate, it needs more debate.”

Viewed as a tool of the party out of power to slow proceedings or force tough votes, the elimination of the motion to suspend may come back to haunt Democrats in the future.

Most people pay no attention to this stuff, and in years past I wouldn’t have known it was happening. But the mentality of the Democrats over the past ten or fifteen years, the way that they bully those who don’t agree with their approach, has really gotten to me. I will remember. This is a problem for our nation as a whole. A gang of bullies, whether on the streets, or in the White House, will eventually force normal people to either pull back entirely, or, potentially to work out ways to file for divorce. The only way that we can interpret one another is through language, and the language employed by this administration in particular has been the language of bullies, of people looking to pick a fight. My hope is that the American public will derail this process before it leads to a total breakdown of the trust which is necessary to hold a country together.

- Aggie

No, not the fact that Barack Obama has refused to comment on the nutty rantings of Teamster Thug, Jimmy Hoffa. The hip new video game, you know, the one where you get to kill conservatives?

A New York-based video game developer has set his virtual crosshairs on Republican and conservative political figures in a game called “Tea Party Zombies Must Die,” which allows players to indiscriminately slaughter politicians like Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

The gruesome game, created by StarvingEyes Advergaming, is billed as “first-person shooter” featuring “Tea Party zombies” to be targeted with an “arsenal of weapons,” including multiple firearms and a crowbar. Notable politicians depicted in the game include current and previous presidential hopefuls like Palin, Bachmann, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. Several Fox News personalities are also featured, including Huckabee, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Brit Hume.

Lesser-known targets include “factory made blonde Fox News Barbie who has never had a problem in her life zombie” or the “Koch industries Koch Whore lobbyist pig zombie.” Fox News logos and a recreation of its studios can be seen in blood-spattered screengrabs posted on the company’s website.

Attention to the game’s release has heightened after violent rhetoric from Teamsters President James P. Hoffa, who in a speech over the weekend told President Obama that his supporters would “take out the son-of-a-bitches” in the Tea Party who were waging “war” against unions.

“The liberal media have been preaching for years that conservatives are the ones who invoke violent imagery and rhetoric. Yet in the space of two days, the radical, pro-Obama left calls us ‘son-of-a-bitches’ and says they want to ‘take us out.’ And they follow that with a hideously violent game where they do just that — depicting ways of shooting prominent conservatives, presidential candidates and journalists,” said Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center. “The news media would be in an uproar if violence had been incited against liberals. Their silence disgusts me.”

The game’s developer, Jason Oda, of Brooklyn, N.Y., did not respond to FoxNews.com requests for comment. But the 32-year-old Connecticut native is no stranger to violent, politically-themed video games.

That’s ok. He’s a liberal and can say or do whatever he wants without any censure. And people wonder why some believe that the country might fall apart, literally break into smaller nations. This is why.

The creator of this game received his BFA from Rhode Island School of design. Oda’s list of clients, according to his website, include high-profile firms like Pepsi, Hasbro, Sears, UPS and many others.

You have to wonder why this firms hire him.

- Aggie

And so can you, honey.

- Aggie