"It's in Oregon, and in Oregon, like, you know, nobody ever thinks about it,"

Somali's bomb plot foiled at Oregon holiday event

A Somali-born teenager attempting to detonate what he believed was a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Ore., was arrested by the authorities Friday night. They had spent nearly six months tracking him and setting up a sting operation, officials in Oregon said.

The bomb, which was in a van parked off Pioneer Courthouse Square, was a fake — planted by FBI agents as part of the elaborate sting — but "the threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, the FBI's special agent in charge in Oregon. An estimated 10,000 people were at the ceremony Friday night, the Portland police said.

The suspect was identified as Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Corvallis, Ore. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

"Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale," Balizan said in a statement released by the Department of Justice.

The New York Times said it was told by a federal law enforcement official that the FBI, tipped off by a Portland Muslim concerned about Mohamud's increasing radicalism, started monitoring his e-mail activity.

[...]

The FBI said that during the operation, Mohamud repeatedly expressed his desire to kill Americans. Reminded by FBI agents posing as accomplices that many children and families would be at the Christmas ceremony, Mohamed said that he was looking for "a huge mass" that could "be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays."

Federal agents also said that Mohamud thought Portland would be a good target because Americans "don't see it as a place where anything will happen."

"It's in Oregon, and in Oregon, like, you know, nobody ever thinks about it," the affidavit quotes him as saying.

Well thank goodness for the concerned Muslim citizen in Portland who reported this guy.

Now I only wonder how long it will be before some of the Leftists in Portland start protesting that this would-be bomber is, like, you know, a victim of the FBI?


Also see:

Oregon bomb plot teen sought ‘spectacular’ site

This second link gives a lot more details. The bomber's Imam sounds like he's got an attitude. And if you look at the comments at the bottom of the article, you'll see my prediction come true: Leftists claiming that the FBI creates terrorists. I'd say that distinction belongs to certain Imams, and their teachings.

And anyone wondering why this would happen in Portland Oregon, should consider this:

Just another bomb-plotting jihadist yelling “Allahu akbar!”

[...] You may recall that loony Portland officials several years ago threatened to pull out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force under the Bush administration and refused to cooperate with federal efforts to conduct voluntary interviews of of local Muslims in order to uncover terrorist plots.

You may also recall the Portland 7, black Muslim converts convicted in a conspiracy to wage war against the United States, provide material support and resources to Al Qaeda and contribute services to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. [...]

But the Leftists in Portland blame the FBI. The suicidal Lunatic Left is always ready to cut off the branch we are all sitting on.
     

Who Elected Kitzhaber as Oregon's Governor?

After the election, Oregon Republicans are at a loss, their dreams dashed in Multnomah County

For the third time in the past decade, Oregon Republicans went to bed on election night thinking they might have finally ended Democratic dominance of statewide races.

But like a recurring bad dream, they awoke Wednesday to see the ballots from heavily Democratic Multnomah County seal a close victory for Democrat John Kitzhaber over Republican Chris Dudley in the governor's race.

"No matter who the Republican is, there is going to be a huge spread there," Bob Repp, a West Linn attorney and Republican volunteer, said with a sigh. "There just seems to be a real rigid dogmatism that has set in in Multnomah County." [...]

It goes into a bunch of reasons to explain "why". I read elsewhere, that the largest employer in Multnomah county is government jobs. Unionized government employees could explain the vote, too.

Portland, not Oregon, elected Kitzhaber

Kitzhaber was elected by a plurality, not a majority, of Oregon's voters.

He received approximately 49% of the ballots cast. Approximately 51% of Oregon's voters supported the Republican candidate (49%), the Constitution Party candidate (1%) or the Libertarian Candidate (1%).

Only seven of Oregon's thirty-six counties were carried by Kitzhaber. The other 29 counties voted for Mr. Chris Dudley.

Kitzhaber was elected by a minority of Oregon's voters. His support was concentrated in Portland and his campaign's funding came primarily from government employee unions.

Will Kitzhaber prove that he is something other than Portland's governor and the agent of the government employee unions? [...]

I have to wonder too, about the potential for voter fraud, especially in pivotal Multnomah county. I've posted about vote-by-mail's vulnerability to fraud.

The whole of Oregon votes by mail. It seems that the main safeguard against fraud is checking the signature on the ballot envelope with a signature on file with the voter registrar. How reliable is that?

When I was a bank teller, I once had customer, a sweet little old lady, who wanted to cash her social security check. Most folks want to deposit those, but she wanted hers all in cash.

Because of the large amount, I had to get my supervisors approval. The sweet LOL gave me her valid photo ID, and I had her sign the check in front of me. I then pulled the customer's signature card from the banks files, and it looked good.

I brought all three items to my supervisor, Helen. She saw the woman at my window, looked at her I.D., verified that the customer had signed the check in my presence, then looked at the signature card. Everything seemed in order, so she approved it.

A few days later, Helen comes to me with some paperwork from the main office. It turned out that the check had been stolen, and we cashed it for the thieves.

Helen told me: "Neither you nor I are in trouble for this, because we did follow all the bank procedures. I just wanted you to see it, as a reminder of why we do all this checking. But it's all too easy for some people to forge signatures".

A signature can look good, and still be fraudulent. Vote-by-mail makes it even easier; the fraudster doesn't even need to be a good forgerer. Signatures can be collected on petitions, and then "traced" onto ballot envelopes. Of course they would then match the signature card. And the fraudster never has to risk being caught by appearing in front of another human being to cast a vote, making it easier for the fraudster to cast multiple fraudulent ballots.

A computer scan is supposed to check for repeated names. But in a close election in a heavily Democrat county dominated by unionized government employees, what guarantee do we have that the scanning was done? The fox is in charge of the hen house.

And lets not forget the votes from the graveyard, which Democrats are famous for. Apparently many years go by without updating the lists of deceased voters. And even if they lists get updated, how do we know they were even checked against the ballots, especially in a close election?

If a Republican won, I'm sure they would be checking everything. But when a Democrat wins, nobody even asks these questions. Why not? Who checks the checkers?

     

Oregon nears highest income tax in the nation

Taxpayer Ambush in Oregon
The public unions win in Portland.

It's not often that citizens vote for higher taxes, but 54% of Oregonians have done precisely that. In a rolling month-long referendum by mail that ended Tuesday, they approved some $700 million in tax hikes on business and wealthy residents.

The highest income tax rate in the state moves to 11% from 9%, which will give Oregon close to the highest rate in the nation. (New York City residents pay 12.6%.) This ballot outcome runs contrary to the current public mood about spending and taxes, so it's worth exploring how it happened.

First, a deluge of money. Local and national public employee unions bankrolled the "yes" campaign, with a $6.5 million blitz in TV and radio ads. That was $2 million more than the business community and taxpayer advocates raised. The cash helped the tax increase roll up a 71% margin in the liberal precincts in and around Portland, even as it lost in most of the rest of the state.

The union message was also as clever as it was disingenuous: All of these taxes will be paid by someone else, such as Wall Street bankers, out-of-state credit card companies, CEOs. Only the richest 2.5% will pay a little more in taxes, the unions also claimed.

The reality is that these taxes will be absorbed by employers who sign worker paychecks—from Nike Inc. to the corner grocer. Two-thirds of those hit with the new 11% tax rate are small and medium-sized business owners. Phil Knight of Nike dubbed the tax initiatives Oregon's "assisted suicide" for business. The real victims of these taxes won't be wealthy business owners, who can always move away or shelter income, but less mobile Oregonians who will find it harder to get or keep a job. [...]

The south coast voted against the taxes, but as usual, the densely populated Portland metropolitan area carried the state. This won't create jobs any more than the White House's "stimulus" plan did. It will do quite the opposite, in fact:

Oregon; following California's example?

Will Oregon voters learn to connect the dots, before it's too late?

     

More reasons for not visiting Portland, OR

I live in rural Oregon, but I'm not at all tempted to visit Portland. The following article by Takuan Seiyo at the Brussel's Journal gives me many reasons to feel that way:



Postcard from Zinnlandia

I am on the MAX Red Line light rail car going from downtown Portland to the Airport. Some things socialists do better. Among them are public transportation, recycling, French poetry readings, yoga, coffee, artisan food and arthouse cinema. Would it that the counterscale were not so much more loaded.

Two hefty women in Birkenstocks and Nordic sweaters sit on the bench in front of me. They are either academics or lesbians or both. Portland is a babe magnet for this kind of babes.

One of them, silver bangles jangling, is showing a souvenir purchase to the other. It’s a garden gnome, complete with a red cap and a Walt Disney tunic stretched taut over a rotund belly. The face, though, is less jovial than one expects on a gnome. An etched inscription on the base reads, “Howard Zinn.”

We are leaving Zinnlandia, after all – that great land of the Pacific Northwest, rich in good wine, including zinfandel, and other bounties of nature. Howard Zinn and his doppelgänger, Noam Chomsky, are to the coastal zones of this blessed land what St. Patrick is to the Emerald Isle. And, like Finlandia, Jutlandia and Hollandia, Zinnlandia too has much Northern European DNA.

Zinnlandia is in Amerikka – that racist, capitalist land of injustice, sexism, specieism, lookism, theism, militarism and homophobia. As a material and cultural Marxist, and skillful propagandist, Zinn – a master of sieving American history for its worst nuggets – is the perfect avatar for the self-flagellating white inhabitant of this land.

A Zinnlandian I met on this trip, a WASP physician endowed with the best education much money can buy, told me that he does not celebrate July 4th because the Declaration of Independence had been written by a slave owner and signed by other slave owners. He was just as hotly critical of the “racism” of Americans in dealing with the growing Muslim immigrant minority. The conversation unfolded over a bottle of Oregon Vino Pinko, with the likeness of a notorious Cuban mass murderer on the label.

Besides the pervasive lefty obtuseness as to the true nature of Che Guevara, there is one central paradox in this Zinnlandian, as there is in all of them. [...]

He goes on to describe his experiences in "Zinnlandia", and the history of crimes committed on the very train he is riding on. They all tie together. In the end, he compares Portland with many other cities he's visited. I enjoy the authors wit, but it's not a pretty picture for a Sunday. I think I need to go work in the garden now... thank God I live in the country.


Related Links:

Attracting a crowd means what exactly?

Anti-American "Art" at Portland Oregon Airport
     

Clinton staffer phones Oregon resident urging her to vote in New Hampshire primary

This is a weird little story, from a woman in Portland, Oregon:

603, 503, whatever, just vote

It's creepy enough that they would be calling someone out of state who left New Hampshire 20 years ago, urging her to vote. But what they did to this lady's phone after the conversation... how do you do that with a long distance call?
     

Anti-American "Art" at Portland Oregon Airport

Radio personality Lars Larson asks if this is appropriate for display in Portland's Tax-funded Airport:


Portland is the largest city in my state; the majority of people live around it. I've never been there before, but I must say, the more I hear about it, the less I want to visit. I moved away from San Francisco to get away from this sort of thing, but it seems like every large city on the West Coast is increasingly becoming part of the Left Coast.

To see more about this and links to other similar things that Portland has become notorious for, see the commentary by Michelle Malkin.


Related Link:

San Francisco's Anti-American July 4th