Filed under: Crime, History, Law, Police, Politics, Progressives, Regulation, Unemployment | Tags: Historical Ignorance, Riots and Mob Behavior, Wanton Destruction
The Left has certainly dragged out their old-time-religion. Race, white supremacy, fascism, and apparently not the slightest interest in what is actually going on in our world today. Riots, not “peaceful protests” and if you have watched the videos, they are not really about much of anything but the fun of roaming down the streets with big groups of people, breaking stuff, breaking windows, damaging property, attacking cars and people. Mindless. They are out there for the fun of it.
They need to be hauled off promptly to jail. Democrat Mayors are terrified of even the possibility of doing anything about it. In Seattle, the feckless Mayor Jenny Durkan pulled herself together a bit and vetoed the feckless Seattle City Council’s attempt to defund the police. And I think I read that the National Guard has been called out for Portland, that would have to be the governor I think, Mayors can’t. But the fun in the streets has spread to Denver, Minneapolis of course, Fort Wayne Indiana, Green Bay Wisconsin, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Olympia WA and that is far from a complete list.
“Black Lives Matter” has nothing to do with this mess. There’s a lot of violence and drugs in poor black neighborhoods, and they want and depend on police protection.
Attacking statues has lost some of its fury. What becomes completely clear is that there is a very deep ignorance of American History. “Fascist” is a popular word: Here’s Wikipedia’s definition, but I’d be willing to bet that few if any of the street mobs could define it. Mindless.
Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.
Look up Benito Mussolini in Italy, who “popularized” the idea. But the problem is authoritarianism. The urge to control. Well, Mussolini made a mess of it, but if you are interested in this “new” authoritarianism I recommend borrowing The Black Book of Communism from your friendly public library. Amazon has it, but it’s quite expensive, even used. Or buy Communism: a Brief History by Richard Pipes, one of our greatest historians. Or read about the Soviet forced labor system in The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. Lana Peters, Stalin’s daughter became an American citizen, and died at 85, not too long ago.
Filed under: Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Law, National Security, Police, Politics, Progressives, Seattle WA, The United States | Tags: Injured Policemen, Protests and Riots, Riots and Mob Behavior
Seattle’s Mayor, the feckless Jenny Durkan (D) took to CNN on Monday to blame President Trump for the riot in Seattle on Sunday. She said Trump’s actions “were responsible for what happened this weekend” in Seattle and “we are seeing the dry run for martial law.” She claimed that those who came to the “protest” came “because of what happened in Portland” but I think she meant the federal officers in Portland trying to end the attacks on the federal building and the people who work there, who obviously deserve to be protested for trying to set the federal building on fire while federal workers were working inside. Just peacefully trying to burn people alive. She seemed to think that people wanted to act out against the president and his administration so that’s why they were protesting in the streets?
If you want to protest against the president, clearly, destroying a Starbucks and setting a construction site for a juvenile detention facility on fire, and throwing explosive devices at Seattle police officers seems a rather odd way to protest Donald Trump. I guess carrying carefully constructed signs is just way too old fashioned, and ordinary people don’t know how to call their representatives in Congress to complain. Hard to come up with a good catchy chant: “No Justice, No Peace” is already old and tired. She told the reporter that “He’s using law enforcement as a political tool”, well, yes, everything any president does is a political tool.
If the mayor of a major city cannot keep order, and vast damage is being done to the city and the people who live there, who is going to take charge?
She further stated that “the number one thing we can do to bring peace to the streets in Seattle and across America is to bring more justice to the systems.” Like shutting down riots, seeing that those committing legal offenses are brought to justice, that sort of thing? Or just what justice did you have in mind?
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2016, Politics, Progressivism, Taxes, Unemployment | Tags: A Little Humor, Election 2016, Riots and Mob Behavior
Of the 112 “protesters” arrested in Portland riots, 69 of them could not be found to have turned in a ballot, nor were registered to vote in Oregon. Interesting details largely unmentioned by the media.
Some Leftist remarked “Why can’t we run someone who’s beloved?”
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2014, Law, Media Bias, Politics, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: No Excessive Use of Force, Professional Protesters, Riots and Mob Behavior
In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The law mandated that the attorney general begin studying the excessive use of force by police, and reporting on their findings. The Bureau of Justice Statistics developed a series of ongoing statistics that measured police behavior in specific situations and incidents in which police use force—like riots and mob behavior. Much of the data was based on direct surveys of citizens rather than reports by local police departments. These surveys and statistics have provided two decades of information on how the police interact with American citizens and how American citizens interact with police.
If it was presumed that the statistics would provide insight for national debates about the use of force by police, the presumption was apparently wrong. When the grand jury reached its decision not to indict police officer Darrell Wilson, the President of the United States jumped into the Missouri debate and told the nation that “the law too often feels like it’s being applied in a discriminatory fashion.”
The New York Times published stories about communities where minorities get stopped more frequently than whites, completely ignoring the statistics from the Bureau of Justice that show that crime victims identify minorities as more frequent perpetrators of crime. There has also been a steady decrease in numbers of people who have interactions with the police. There has been a drop in crime as well. The numbers of people who report crimes to the police has fallen from 664,000 in 2002 to 574,000 in a 2010 report. The number of African-Americans who reported that police had used force against them fell from 173,000 to 130,000, for whites the number dropped from 374,000 to 347,000. The situations which caused the use of force were not listed.
President Obama helpfully added to the debate, saying that “bad training” and “a fear of folks who look different” in some police departments has contributed to the ongoing mistrust between law enforcement and minority communities. He claimed that “this is a national problem that’s going to require a national solution.”
The president has announced a new task force on policing that will examine “how to promote effective crime reduction while building public trust” according to the White House. A task force focused on police behavior is really not what is called for.
Michael Brown and Eric Garner’s deaths are human tragedies, but they are not emblematic of police overreach or abuse. Grand juries, in both cases examined all the evidence and declined to bring charges against the police. Young black men are far more likely to be shot by one another than by a police officer. Jason Riley adds:
There were about 6,300 black homicides in the U.S. last year, according to the FBI, and 85% involved black civilian perpetrators. Police officers, by contrast, were responsible for 3% of deaths, which in most cases resulted from the victim assaulting the officer (Brown) or resisting arrest (Garner). Nor do the data suggest that trigger-happy officers are gunning down black men for minor offenses.
Street protests continue, egged on by professional protesters, and universities like Columbia and Harvard which have encouraged students to work through their trauma from the two cases and postpone exams if they were too upset. Professional protesters, anarchists, socialist activists and a lot of useful idiots from assorted colleges. The more dramatic protests are in all the usual cities, and “Die-Ins” seem to be the preferred mode. Kind of embarrassing.
American Elephants 