BY VICTORIA TAFT | P J Media
AP Photo/Marcio
Jose Sanchez
For the better part of the past
three months, neighborhoods of Portland, Oregon, Minnesota, Seattle, Atlanta,
Chicago, Kenosha and other cities and states – all run by Democrats – have been
on fire.
The police killing of George
Floyd started the fire, but, as an old Japanese saying goes, “Fire always makes
room for itself.”
The “fire” is spreading like a
metastic cancer. It is intentionally set in places where it is allowed to
flourish and spread. It runs wild and unabated under the Democrats who oversee
those towns and cities.
Riots Are Like Out-of-Control Flames
Seattle’s Jenny Durkan,
Minneapolis’s Jacob Frey, Portland’s Ted Wheeler, Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown,
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago fan the flames. They
make excuses for murder in St. Louis and the constant assault of local and
federal officers in Portland. They hate the president so much they won’t take
help from him as a point of pride, salving their own egos while their cities
are looted “for reparations,” pillaged for “social justice” and set on fire to
leave a sick mark of “accomplishment.”
I’m looking to the public. You know, this is as much
about public outcry and organizing and mobilizing and applying pressure […] You
know there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in
our lives.
Democrats, fearing they’ll be
hurt politically or physically, encourage the lawlessness. They allow it. They
call them “peaceful protesters.” These “leaders” don’t stop the fire when it’s
small. They wait till the fire is big and dangerous before trying to douse it.
Like fire fighters trying to contain a huge blaze, police are allowed only to
surround and stop the riots from spreading. The next day, the arrested fire
starters are back out, bailed out, if there is bail at all, by people like vice
presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Black Lives Matter,
Incorporated™ and antifa who cheer them on.
Rioters Like Antifa Are Imaginary
House Judiciary Chair Jerry
Nadler thinks antifa is imaginary and that the Portland riots aren’t
that big of a deal. He’s said it at least twice. He accused the president and
Attorney General Bill Barr of blowing the riots out of proportion.
A poll in late July showed that
voters are OK with protests. USA Today mocked the Trump administration for sounding
the alarm – again – about rioting.
The support for the protests comes as the White
House and Attorney General William Barr try to paint the
protesters as “violent rioters.” [Emphasis added]
But some sounded a warning.
The National Journal at one point ran a piece entitled,
“Democrats risk backlash if they don’t condemn rioting.” Nobody listened. The
riots, looting, and protests were just too good a political
point for the Democrats. It was a winning issue for them. Joe Biden was winning
in the polls!
The rioting wasn’t mentioned at
all at the Democratic National Convention. There were only references to “chaos,” which they promised would
go away the second Joe Biden was elected president.
POOF! The Summer Of Love Is Over
But – poof – just like that,
Democrats now conclude that the “Summer of Love” is over.
CNN’s Don Lemon has delivered
them a news flash and a piece of advice. The unabated riots that both he and
CNN Chris Cuomo are aiding and abetting are upsetting voters. And it’s showing
up in the polls. Lemon told Cuomo:
[Biden’s] got to come out and tell people that’s
he’s going to deal with the issue of police reform and that what’s happening
now is happening under Donald’s Trump watch.
But guess what? The rioting has to stop. Chris, as
you know and I know, it’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus
groups. It is the only thing — it is the only thing right now that is sticking
[by the Republicans].
And before you could say “you
know, the thing,” Lemon’s words are coming out of Biden’s mouth.
Joe Biden Finds His Special Purpose
Biden, who heretofore failed to
denounce a single thing about the violent rioters and looters, all of a sudden
is having a change of heart. He’s a changed man. It’s all so clear to him now.
Like Navin Johnson, Joe Biden found his special purpose. The scales fell
from Joe’s eyes and all of a sudden he understood that rioting, looting, and
setting fire to other people’s property are bad.
Quick! Tell the media I’m
somebody! And he got in touch with The New York Times to tell them all about his newly
found special purpose.
As I said after George Floyd’s murder, protesting
brutality is a right and absolutely necessary. Burning down communities is not
protest, it’s needless violence. Violence that endangers lives. Violence that
guts businesses, and shutters businesses, that serve the community. That’s
wrong.
The Times report says voters in Wisconsin
are not happy with his pro-riot ways.
Priscella Gazda, a waitress at a pizza restaurant in
Kenosha, was having the opposite reaction. She said she had voted only once in
her life — for Mr. Obama in 2008. Her son has Type 1 diabetes and was hoping
for health insurance.
“I’m not the one who would ever vote,” she said.
But after the chaos in her town, this year is
different.“I am going to vote for Trump,” she said.
“He seems to be more about the American people and
what we need.”
Committed Republicans are also
upset with the local leadership that allows the Kenosha riots.
Don Biehn, 62, owner of a flooring company, was
standing in line at a gun store on Tuesday afternoon. He said that he had never
bought a pistol before, but that he had a business to protect. A former county
board supervisor, Mr. Biehn said he had been calling county and state officials
for days, trying to explain how grave the situation was.
He added: “It’s chaos — everybody is afraid.”
Mr. Trump, he said, “was not my man,” but now he is
grateful he is president.
Apparently the opinions of
these citizens made their way into the close-to-the-vest public opinion polls
or Joe Biden’s internal polling because Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo can’t be the
only ones who know.
Cuomo: I think [riots] probably represents the
biggest threat to the Democratic cause.
Lemon: Kenosha is a Rorschach test for the
entire country, and I think this is a blind spot for Democrats. I think
Democrats are ignoring this problem or hoping that it will go away, and it’s
not going to go away. It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus
groups.
Hillary Clinton didn’t visit
Wisconsin in 2016, which she and many others attribute her loss to, but maybe
Joe can get out there. Joe can trip the light fantastic at The Good Taste Ice Cream Shoppe, which was gutted by
arsonists with Black Lives Matter and antifa groups. He can’t miss it, it’s
right next door to the Mexican grocery that’s been reduced to cinder by
torch-wielding social justice warriors.
Riot Data Analyst Is Fired for Telling the
Truth
In May, a “progressive data
analyst” looked at the poll numbers in the 1968 election season, when the
anti-war movement was in full dudgeon and there were protests, riots, Weather
Underground bombings and … stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Nixon won.
His platform included a push
for law and order on America’s campuses and chaotic and riotous streets and
promised to end the Vietnam War. Ever since, his detractors interpreted Nixon’s
comeback and his law-and-order stance as a racist dog whistle. They claimed it
was the supposedly racist and murky “Southern Strategy.”
But, whoops, the data analyst
came up with a different interpretation.
The New York Times reported that the data analyst found
that protests help Democrats but riots work against them.
Shor is a progressive data analyst who has spent his
career trying “to help elect Democrats while moving the party leftward,” as
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine put it. In May,
Shor tweeted a summary of a new academic paper about the 1968
election by Omar Wasow of Princeton. The paper found that nonviolent
protests tended to increase the Democratic vote share in surrounding areas that
year, while riots tended to decrease it.
His employer — Civis Analytics, a liberal research
firm — quickly fired him.
Just spitballing here, but the
“progressive data analyst” just blew up the “Southern Strategy.” Do you suppose
that’s why he was fired?
It sounds as if Don Lemon has
seen similar polling in the 2020 race.
Which brings us back to Joe and
his sudden change of heart about riots.
Joe changed his mind about
riots, not for reasons of right or wrong. Not out of a desire to lead people
away from the fire that immolates innocents. But because riots won’t win him
votes.
Biden took another piece of Don
Lemon’s advice. After President Trump’s nominating convention speech, Joe sent
this tweet, saying:
Remember: every example of violence Donald Trump
decries has happened on his watch. Under his leadership. During his presidency.
Joe’s gone from feeding the
fire to striking a match to a gaslight.
_________________
RELATED
NEWS
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Senator Rand Paul and Others Attacked by
Rioters After Trump RNC Speech
Rand Paul got chased by a
crowd back to his hotel, after leaving the White House from Trump’s Republican
Party Nomination. Photo By Brendan
Gutenschwage
“Peaceful protesters” rioted,
assaulted, intimidated, and blocked VIPs and others who were attempting to walk
back to their cars about a block away from where President Trump had just
delivered his GOP nomination acceptance speech on the White House lawn.
Among those assaulted by
rioters and violent protesters was Senator Rand Paul.
Paul has earned a political
violence Hat Trick of sorts. He was at the baseball field and survived the
shooting of Republicans by a crazed Bernie Sanders volunteer. He barely survived
an attack by his neighbor, who jumped him from behind, broke several of his
ribs, and inflicted other injuries. And he survived being mobbed Thursday night
near the White House when violent Black Lives Matter Incorporated™ terrorists
surrounded and intimidated him.
Rioters Attack Others
This New York Daily
News columnist and “Obama guy” used this video to call Senator Paul a
“liar” for being afraid for his life. Watch the video.
Rioters and “protesters,” but I
repeat myself, imposed a checkpoint for the VIPs, stopping and surrounding them
and forcing them to answer their questions and demands.
Rioters Set Up Checkpoints to Block
People
They squared up on Florida
Congressman Brian Mast, who lost two legs and a hand in combat and who wears
two prosthetic legs.
Rioters Frighten People on VIP Bus
Protesters blocked, and then
hopped on, a bus carrying VIPs. They look like they’re having fun. I’m sure the
people inside the bus were terrified they’d be mobbed or set on fire.
As the crowds came out of the
protected area, they were forced to go through a gauntlet of people yelling,
screaming, jumping at them, using filthy language, and doing their best to
intimidate them.
The Mob Pushes and Assaults Man
The mob followed people walking
away from the White House. The terrorist bunch was free to surround and assault
this man, who had come to the National Mall to watch the firework show after
the president’s speech. They pushed him multiple times and shoved him to the
ground as he tried to walk with his wife to a safe area. There wasn’t a safe
spot.
They threw liquid at him, and a
guy with a bullhorn put it directly in the man’s ear and yelled, “get the f*ck
out!” The mob called him a “piece of sh*t,”
As he lay there for a few
seconds looking up at the mob, he was probably wondering if he’d make it out
alive.
Charlie Kirk of Turning Point
USA blamed the melee on D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for failing to secure the
streets near the White House. He called the violent mob “their voting base.”
Bowser has made no secret of
her contempt for the Trump administration.
Maybe this was her way of
sending a message to the president.
We vote in 67 days. There’s
still time to turn D.C. into Portland and don’t think the mob won’t try.
__________________
Democrats own these riots –
blaming Trump won't work
Democratic
mayors and governors have all but encouraged the mayhem
Democrats can try but won't succeed at distancing
themselves from the violence they
have enabled on American streets. People surely know where the Democrats have
stood on this, and that they're now backpedaling only because of polling data.
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg outright
blamed this anarchy on President Donald Trump.
"The simple reality is that we are seeing more and
more chaos and violence under the Trump presidency, and there's no reason to
expect that it would get any different or better if he were reelected,"
said Buttigieg.
"This is very much characteristic of living in Donald Trump's America, and
I think we're going to see more and more of it as long as he's in charge."
To blame this violence on Trump because he's in office is
like blaming him for the border wall not being erected fast enough.
It's like blaming him for the economic slowdown caused by
the coronavirus when, in fact, he has persistently tried, over strenuous
Democratic obstruction, to sensibly and safely reopen our economy.
It would be like blaming him for abortions because they
have persisted during his first term despite his valiant efforts for the
innocent unborn.
It is inconceivable that Buttigieg is unaware Democratic
mayors and governors have all but encouraged this mayhem.
Many have consistently rejected Trump's offer of federal
law enforcement assistance to quell the riots. Many have cavalierly
misrepresented the violence as peaceful protests.
Democratic CNN has called the Kenosha riots "fiery
but mostly peaceful," and the Democratic Virginia Senate just passed a
bill allowing assaults on police officers to be mere misdemeanors, for crying
out loud.
If Joe Biden or any other Democrat at the Democratic
National Convention denounced the violence, I sincerely missed it.
Then, something happened.
No, Democrats didn't all of a sudden become outraged at
the criminal assaults and property destruction against people whose only sin
was to own businesses in a convenient location for Marxist arsonists and
opportunistic looters.
Democrats apparently discovered through internal polling
and focus groups that most Americans are appalled by this leftist orchestrated
breakdown of law and order, and that they actually care about safe streets.
Shocker.
CNN's Don Lemon seems to have changed his mind on the
riots – but not because he has had a law and order epiphany. "The
rioting has to stop," Lemon said. "It's showing up in the polling.
It's showing up in focus groups. ... it is the only thing right now that is
sticking."
"The problem is not gonna be fixed by then"
– the election – "but what they can do – and I think ...
Joe Biden may be afraid to do it. I'm not sure. Maybe he won't; maybe he is
– he's got to address it," said Lemon. "He's got to come out and
talk about it."
Lemon must be too obtuse to understand what he is
telegraphing about Biden when he speculates that Biden might be afraid to
address the violence. What possible reason could he have to be afraid to
condemn it? What justification could there be for such wanton lawlessness?
One of Biden's handlers must have seen the polling data,
too, though, for after months of silence on the matter, Biden finally
faintheartedly denounced the chaos, saying: "Needless violence won't heal
us. We need to end the violence now – and peacefully come together to
demand justice."
Well, Mr. Biden, why haven't you urged Democratic
governors to take charge of this madness? Why haven't you encouraged them to
accept President Trump's offers of federal assistance? And just what do you
mean that we ought to all come together to demand justice? You know that Trump
condemned the George Floyd killing within hours of its occurrence, yet some of
your Democratic friends are acting like he kneeled on Floyd's neck himself.
It's not just Buttigieg trying to pin the violence on
Trump. Indeed, the entire Democratic Party apparatus, now that it has
strategically decided it better shift gears and publicly oppose the violence,
is poised to blame the anarchy on Trump, not just because it is happening
during his presidency but also because Democrats claim he is an evil racist who
engenders an atmosphere of racism in the country.
This cynical slander of Trump and his supporters as
racists has got to stop. But it won't, because it still works for Democrats
politically.
The Democrats' enabling of street violence is another
matter. They obviously miscalculated and are now paying a steep price.
Republicans are the party of law and order, and Democrats
are the party of lawlessness and disorder. Democrats own these riots. They own
this endless leftist drumbeat of hatred toward America and everything it stands
for.
Unhappily for them, people have awakened to just how far
left Democratic leaders are willing to go, and it's not playing well for them,
including in the precious swing states they need to win back the presidency.
They can now pretend to oppose the violence until they
are as blue in the face as the uniforms of the cops they demonize, but it's too
late. They chose the wrong time to side with criminals torching our cities – a
time when Americans are feeling particularly unsafe and insecure. No one is
going to believe they didn't know exactly what they were doing, and few will
buy that they've had a genuine change of heart.
Karma.
__________________
The Sick Left: Looting Goes Mainstream on NPR
With lawlessness and organized looting threatening to
take down Joe Biden (which is why I’ve been calling the riots “spontaneous
pro-Trump rallies”—have they filed their in-kind contribution reports with the
FEC by the way?), we’ve seen leading Democrats like AOC say looting is just
desperate people trying to get necessities. Like flat screen TVs and Nike
shoes, though I haven’t been able to find the FDA’s nutritional guidance on
any of these necessities.
For
people who haven’t read your book, how do you define looting?
When
I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass
shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot. That’s the thing I’m
defending. . .
Can
you talk about rioting as a tactic? What are the reasons people deploy it as a
strategy?
It
does a number of important things. It gets people what they need for free
immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their
lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage—which, during COVID times, is
widely unreliable or, particularly in these communities is often not available,
or it comes at great risk. That’s looting’s most basic tactical power as a
political mode of action.
It
also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks
the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have
a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in
order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had
to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that’s unjust.
And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the
profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the
heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and
without state oppression, we can have things for free. . .
Looting
strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to
the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it
provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps
them imagine a world that could be. And I think that’s a part of it that
doesn’t really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort
of joyous and liberatory.
What
are some of the most common myths and tropes that you hear about looting?
. .
. one is that looters are just acting as consumers: Why are they taking flat screen TVs instead of rice and beans?
Like, if they were just surviving, it’d be one thing, but they’re taking
liquor. All these tropes come down to claiming that the rioters and the looters
don’t know what they’re doing. They’re acting, you know, in a disorganized way,
maybe an “animalistic” way. But the history of the movement for liberation in
America is full of looters and rioters. They’ve always been a part of our
movement.
What
would you say to people who are concerned about essential places like grocery
stores or pharmacies being attacked in those communities?
When
it comes to small business, family owned business or locally owned business,
they are no more likely to provide worker protections. They are no more likely
to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses. It’s
actually a Republican myth that has, over the last 20 years, really crawled
into even leftist discourse: that the small business owner must be respected,
that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community. But
that’s actually a right-wing myth.
A
business being attacked in the community is ultimately about attacking like
modes of oppression that exist in the community.
The whole thing is a window into the mental perversion of
today’s left.
A lot of people are attacking NPR for
featuring such an obvious nut job, but I think we should thank NPR for giving
such extended exposure to a view that is widespread in the Democratic Party
right now.
If ever there was an opportunity for Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris to have a “Sister Souljah moment,” it would be right now. Anyone
making book that they can do it?
