Posted on 10/11/2005 11:39:26 AM PDT by against_kerry
The tan-colored home in Shoreline shows signs of the times.
A blue sign near the window reads, "Bush-Cheney."
A large one near the front walkway declares, "Elect David Irons -- King County Executive."
Ken Potts, a Vietnam War veteran and Shoreline resident, has become the target of vandalism aimed at his politics. An electronic display in an upstairs window scrolls these words in red: "Liberalism is a mental disorder."
"That's a quote from Michael Savage," Ken Potts, the owner of the home, explains, referring to the strident talk radio personality. "He's a little right of me, but he comes up with good stuff sometimes."
Potts leans politically right, and unapologetically so.
A strong Christian and an Army vet with three tours in Vietnam, Potts, a King County Jail corrections officer, considers himself a patriot of America.
This explains the handful of tiny American flags in his front yard, the neon American flag display in the front window and the 25-foot-high flagpole out front, flying red, white and blue.
One new message at the Potts household is as bold as it is unwanted: "BUSHNAZIS."
The word was spray-painted in 2-foot-tall black letters a little more than a week ago, when Potts was on a photography trip in Southeast Asia.
To see the writing on the side of the home is to bear witness to the rising temperature of our liberal-minded community.
As the war in Iraq trudges on, free expression comes with an unexpected cost -- attacks on private property.
What is worse, some people accuse Potts -- a man who tells me that he was thousands of miles away when the words appeared -- of having a hand in what happened as part of a politically motivated stunt.
I asked Potts about that. He reacted as if someone had cold-cocked him.
"When people question your integrity, your honesty," the Purple Heart recipient said, shaking his head as leaves rustled in his yard near North 185th Street, "it's worse than the attacks itself."
Note that he said "attacks," plural.
The anti-Bush scrawl on the house Potts has called home for 15 years prompted him for the first time to speak up about other recent vandalism -- incidents being investigated by the King County Sheriff's Office.
For months, unknown people have targeted the property. For months, the property owner has kept silent.
One night in May of last year Potts heard a thump-thump at midnight. He jumped out of bed, went outside and saw that one of his Bush-Cheney signs had been pelted with raw eggs. Part of his house was drenched in yolk, too. Soon afterward, someone poured gray paint on a pro-GOP sign.
His mailbox has been blown up twice with firecrackers. That was back in 2003 and 2004. Potts now has a heavy-gauge steel mailbox cemented into the ground.
Vandals have taken down his American flag three times. Twice it was stolen. A third time the miscreants tore it up and left the shreds in the yard.
Another time, Potts said, someone drew a swastika on his white 101st Airborne Division flag emblazoned with the division's screaming eagle symbol.
On the flag, the trespasser also wrote, in red, "murderer."
Potts, 58, couldn't fathom why someone would invoke such a heinous symbol. The 101st, which Potts was a part of when he suffered shrapnel wounds in Vietnam, led the charge to thwart the Nazis during World War II.
Not long ago, someone keyed the family's black truck -- the vehicle with the bumper sticker asking people to support U.S. troops.
And now this: BUSHNAZIS.
It all stems from ignorance, the kind of zealotry one finds in extremists of all political stripes, people who cross the line of common decency.
Potts' wife, Marytia, says vandalism is pointless.
A native of Vietnam, Marytia met Potts when he was a soldier. They have been married 36 years and have two grown children. Having come from an authoritarian Third World country, Potts' wife says she appreciates the freedoms and opportunities in the United States -- blessings that brave soldiers help to preserve.
The couple now fear that the people responsible for attacking their home might ratchet up the intimidation.
That is why they have installed security cameras.
So, it has come to this.
In America, civil people are supposed to be able to agree to disagree. In America, people are supposed to respect the private property of others.
What's been happening to the Potts is a display of the un-American way.
Amazing to see the lefty PI telling it straight.
Update on the Viet Nam vet whose house was vandalized.
He still has the electronic reader-board saying "Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder.".
"What's been happening to the Potts is a display of the un-American way."
But it is a display of the liberal Democratic way...
Thanks to the PI for telling this story. But they miss the larger point that this kind of hate and disrespect is the direct result of the Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, George Soros-ization of the Democratic party. They along with strident and angry voices from the Democratic party's leaders, whether it be Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Al Gore, etc, have created the atmosphere in which this kind of criminality and extremism can thrive. They all need to be held accountable for creating a force of fanaticism within the Democratic/liberal movement that is beginning to look a lot like the Nazi brownshirts of Weimer Germany prior to the ascent of the Third Reich.
Why does the left feel they can throw pies, vandalize homes and cars all in the name of peace and freedom?
See also....
SUV Drivers in Paris Get Wind Knocked Out of Them
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1500061/posts
Vogue editor hit with pie in Paris (Peta alert)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1500199/posts
Just put a Rottie in the front yard. NO ONE will come near his house.
Let a conservative try something like this, and watch the libs cry foul.
Of course, conservatives are too proud to stoop to the level of the libs and vandalize property and such.
The said state of affairs is that if those lib idiots get bit by my Rottie, I get sued - even if they are trespassing.
A perfect example of the tolerance, inclusion and diversity of liberal moonbats ~ oops, they always preach that ~ all they practice is hate, hate, hate!
Not quite straight. The author's tone of wide-eyed mystification about "why would somebody do this" is utterly dishonest. He lives in Seattle, and you can't do that without seeing the large number of liberals who seem to be consumed by their anger about ... well, whatever odd issue happens to grab them. It's really difficult for one hasn't lived in Seattle, or actually within some similar liberal bastion, to believe that such anger can exist.
If Our Author was really honest, he'd have pointed that out.
This behavior is a prime reason for the Brady campaign to frighten libs away from Florida. They are afraid fellow Socialists will get shot while being loudmouthed selfish arrogant jerks, which is acceptable behavior in Seattle.
Libs will be libs, they will never change.
Not true. The people you've mentioned are simply filling a market niche, in much the way that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity fill a market niche.
Limbaugh didn't create an audience of conservatives -- they were already there, and Rush simply found a way to tap into that energy. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the loonies in Seattle were already there, too, and they've been angry like this for decades.
Just make sure your tresspasser is armed and dead. In that condition they have difficulty retaining attorneys.
"I can tell you from first-hand experience that the loonies in Seattle were already there, too, and they've been angry like this for decades."
Of course that's true. But it is only in recent years that these people were taken seriously by the mainstream media and by the Democratic party and given a seat at the table. Prior to that these people were marginalized at best and looked on as just being a fringe element. Now they are the loudest voice being heard in Democratic politics and in determining the direction of the Democratic party.
Do you really think 22 Democratic Senators voted against John Roberts because they really found him unqualified or was it out of fear of what this extremist wing would do to them when they ran for president or for re-election? Clearly Moveon.org and other extremist groups had their warnings heard and heeded. Ten years ago John Roberts would have been confirmed with 97 or 98 votes, not just 77.
Even Bill Clinton, though I will always believe he was a liberal at heart as we can see about the left lurching direction his administration took when first elected, had the sense to keep these extremists at a far distant arms length and moved the party to something closer to the middle ground.
But today's Democrats would never dare do that, instead feeling only secure enough to run left, far left. Even the moderate likes of Evan Bayh has read the political winds in the Democratic party and moved well left. And Hillary Clinton has all but given up any pretense of needing to be a moderate.
No, while these loonies have always been around they've not had the power and voice they have now. And they've been enabled and emboldened by the likes of Moore, Sheehan, Soros, Kerry, Kennedy, Gore, etc.
Seems to me a situation perfectly made for "hunting" over bait.
"Liberalism is a mental DISEASE." Is the correct quote of Savage.
Liberals are cowards, who run in herds.
Hey local yokel conservatives, "a little help?"
========================================================================= Oh, I don't know. Do they still make rock-salt shotgun shells, or are those custom loads?? You don't have to kill a trespasser to educate him about liberty, freedom of speech, private property, and trespassing.
SFS
BTW, the "hunting" I'm talking about, is with a super soaker squirt gun full of old pi$$, or other appropriate vile liquid, (which should include a brilliant non-washable dye, to aid in ID-ing these scumbags).
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