I noticed this at Don Surber’s spot on Sunday and thought it worth bringing up
Proud to be #400 Like. You nailed it, sister! Reactionary does not begin to describe the #TDSafflicted#DonkeyBadgeMedia activists. I don’t know. Cats and laser pointers? Oh, and to be clear, destroying 1500 buildings in Minneapolis is not peaceful protest. It’s a blitzkrieg. pic.twitter.com/TgysdKLiyf
I don’t think the people in the bubble really understand what this is doing to the voters because they dismiss all sources outside of the MSM.
However social media from facebook to twitter to parler to instagram means that these stories and sources get out to folks. They may not live politics but the see it and will act accordingly.
I told you about my liberal nephew in Minneapolis who on January 1st was a nevertrump Democrat who will be, as he put it, “crawling over broken glass in a mask to vote for him in November” after the riots. These people have friends and family all over the country who have been told of these riots.
I think that like John Stewart belatedly trying to rally the left in 2010 late October when the reality of the situation finally dawned on him, the Antifa / media / democrat left along with the Deep staters who have enabled them are going to figure this out at the last minute and realize that they are about to lose.
That’s when, like a rat in a corner they will become panicked and the most dangerous. A Trump victory means
Federal prosecutions of those already arrested will actually happen with a lot more to come.
Investigations actually started will progress from the phony Russia Probe to reviewing tapes of riots
Cities that enabled this stuff knowing they will not be bailed out if they back down will have to actually enforce the laws.
And companies intimidated by the woke mob who helped fund them will decide that they’d better get right with Trump while they still can
And that’s not even mentioning use of RICO statues to go after those folks and foundations that have been funding these riots directly which is going to be fueled by this:
A Supreme Court ruling just stripped Soros’ Open Societies entities abroad of 1A “rights” they were taking advantage of influencing US policy w Soros’ foreign orgs & ops. Now they are deemed foreign, & have no US right to free speech, & activities can be considered threatening pic.twitter.com/HVhpkHQRKg
In short once these folks realize all this is coming I expect one last violent outburst in an attempt to stop it.
It will be bad, very bad. In fact I would be shocked if it didn’t include at least one actual assassination attempt on the President with more to come after he wins both enabled by nevertrumpers still working in government worried about investigation.
I am hoping that I’m wrong about all of this (particularly the last because the violent backlash if it succeeds will be horrible, particularly for the left) but I suggest being ready in case I’m not.
About twelve hours after I finished my DTG post last week about Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s get-tough policy on sunbathers in Chicago at Lake Michigan, Chicago became Detroit. That’s not to say that you can now drive for miles in America’s third-largest city–for now–and see nothing but a few lived-in homes among the vacant lots and abandoned houses. Just as you didn’t encounter that in Detroit after the destructive riots there a few days after the 1967 riots faded away.
The Motor City hit rock bottom in 2013 when it declared bankruptcy.
These things take time. Detroit is turning things around now. But its vacant lots will be there for many years.
“Seventy percent of Chicago’s economic activity takes place in and around downtown,” Mike Flannery said last night on his Flannery Fired Up program on Fox Chicago, “and it’s in more peril now than ever before.”
And that’s where the looting, likely directed by Antifa, was centered late last Sunday night and early Monday morning–in and around downtown. Flannery called it “Sad, organized-crime looting.”
So the simple story is that economically speaking, the heart of Chicago is the Loop and North Michigan Avenue, the latter has been known as the Magnificent Mile for decades. You kill that and Chicago dies. Welcome to Detroit.
Last Sunday afternoon a 20-year-old Englewood man was shot by Chicago police officers; he has since been charged with first-degree attempted murder. The accused allegedly shot at the police. A rumor spread online–or was it a manufactured lie?–that the cops shot instead shot an unarmed 15-year-old boy in the same impoverished Englewood neighborhood.
Then came the looting later that night.
The coordinated manner of the looting consisted of mobile criminals, a few of them armed, that quickly descended on the Mag Mile. Some of them came with specialized tools such as drills to hasten the break-ins. There were reports of U-Hauls being packed with stolen goods. The thieves were more organized, Flannery remarked, than the 400 police officers dispatched downtown to confront them.
Much like the people of Englewood, the residents of the downtown area–and the business owners–don’t feel safe there. That’s not to say the folks of the South Side–or the even-worse off West Side–don’t deserve to feel safe. They certainly do. Some of that 70-percent-of-Chicago’s-economic-activity makes its way to the city’s poverty-stricken areas. Should they receive more of it? Probably, but that discussion will belong to shoulda-happened-looking-back rants that you’ll find on Reddit soon.
A few days after the most recent round of looting it was reported that Macy’s is considering leaving the glitzy Water Tower Place mall on North Michigan Avenue, or just perhaps they’ll just downsize there. Under the Marshall Field’s name Macy’s was an original tenant of the mall. What of the smaller operations, the family-run retail outlets who have been devastated with two rounds of looting in just over two months? When they leave, because they don’t have the big names, it won’t make big news. But when Chicago’s downtown area is dominated by boarded up store-fronts with signs declaring “Move in now–lease rates reduced again–first month free!” you’ll know the downtown descent is well under way.
As for the residents of the Loop, the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview, unlike those people in Englewood, they can afford to move and swallow selling their homes at a loss. A lot of them will. “Why should I stay here?” many will wonder, “there is so much crime, there are no good restaurants here, and there are no decent places to shop.”
You don’t believe me? Here’s what Alderman Brian Hopkins (2nd), a Lightfoot opponent, said on that same Flannery Fired Up show. He decried “the economic devastation and the blow to our collective psyche,” as well as “the sense that people have that they can’t live here anymore, their safety is at risk if they try to live here.” Hopkins believes with the right actions Chicago can be saved. Lightfoot certainly knows that she is facing a severe crisis. But I suspect because she is an ideologue she is incapable of instituting meaningful policy changes.
Right now I believe that for Chicago it’s a matter of mitigating its decline and fall. The looting and riots are of course just a symptom. Chicago hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1931 but it’s best-known mayor–and possibly its best-ever–was machine boss Richard J. Daley, who ruled America’s then-second-largest city with an iron fist from 1955 until 1976. He was a New Deal Democrat–with a strong law-and-order bent. But Lori Lightfoot is Chicago’s first leftist mayor. After the spring round of looting and riots she seemed more interested in protecting the rights of protesters than protecting citizens and businesses. Sadly the line between rioters and protesters in 2020 is blurry and that sentiment was expressed by a Black Lives Matter organizer who said last week in front of a Chicago Police station about looting, “That is reparations.”
Yesterday a march on the South Side evolved in a violent confrontation downtown between protesters and the police. Cops were attacked with mace, one police officer was repeatedly struck with a skateboard.
Many accounts of this latest round of looting mentioned that the criminals seemed emboldened. Of course they are.
Chicago has other serious problems. Its municipal pension programs are the worst-funded of any major city. Detroit’s fall was hastened by enacting a commuter and municipal income tax in 1963. Chicago doesn’t have either of those but it has its pension bomb. So does Cook County and the rest of Illinois. Lightfoot, to be fair, didn’t create the Chicago pension crisis. It was Boss Daley’s son, Richard M., another long-serving mayor, who bears most of the responsibility for that disaster.
Welcome to Detroit.
If there is a way out for Chicago, here it is. State law needs to be changed so municipalities and government agencies can declare bankruptcy. This move will in the short-term be painful as pensioners will receive a “haircut” and vendors will end up with ten-cents on the dollar or so for money owed to them. And the federal government needs to allow states to do the same.
Yep, just like Detroit.
I’m not gleeful about such a move. I have friends and relatives who are collecting those pensions. And as a man of the private-sector I don’t like seeing businesses getting short-changed. As a property owner living just five miles from the city limits I might get caught up in the financial tsunami too.
But the money wasn’t there for pensions in Chicago before COVID-19 and the riots. There’s less of it now.
I was born in Chicago and I’ve lived one-third of my life there. This story is tragic.
Agitators in Chicago complain of “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” Perhaps. But then again perhaps not. Lightfoot, Foxx, as well as the Cook County president, Toni Preckwinkle, are African-American women. Chicago’s new police chief is a black man, he succeeded another African-American male. The chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court is a black man too.
Another way to cushion Chicago’s fall is its citizens to vote, regardless of party-affiliation, for leaders who are results-oriented and not ideologues.
Baldrick: My mother told me to stand up to homicidal maniacs
Black Adder the 3rd Duel and Duality 1987
One of the most pleasant surprises of this TV season has been the DC series Stargirl a well written comic book series about a character I had never heard of as she was introduced a full 10 years after I closed my comic store.
Over the past 10 weeks or so it’s become a Sunday ritual in the house that my wife gets home from work just before midnight, I get home 30 minutes later and we watch the newest episode which goes live at 11 PM EST each Sunday on the DC network together. It is well acted, well plotted and very well written, likely due to the fact the actual creator of the characters involved is the writer. Furthermore because of the DC multiverse concept (introduced way back in 1961 ) there is complete flexibility as to if a character lives or dies as was amply demonstrated in last week’s show the penultimate episode of this 1st season. (a spoiler from said episode 12 follows)
To set the stage, Injustice Society of America members Sportsmaster (Neil Hopkins) & his wife Tigress (Joy Osmanski) have just failed to killed Stargirl & her family as assigned. So the leader of the ISA Icicle (Neil Jackson) sends the Fiddler (Hinda Kahn) to assist them in a 2nd murder attempt with this result:
Now this scene struck me in several ways. First of all even in normal everyday circumstances it’s rather impolite to go into a couple’s home, insult their daughter and declare them unfit parents, but it’s downright suicidal to do so when:
You know said people are psychopathic killers
You, as the principal of the high school their daughter attends, know that said psychopathic killers have already killed three of your school’s football coaches for disciplining said daughter on the field.
You know they kill for sheer pleasure.
That a highly intelligent professional cold blooded calculating murderer would not see the danger in this and instead presume that because they were all working toward the same master plan about to come to fruition they’d just take being scolded and insulted on a personal family level without complaint, surprised me completely.
I mean, it’s a comic show so you have to suspend disbelief to a degree but C’mon!
And THAT brings us to Antifa and the Democrats.
There seems to be some surprise online that the Democrats who turned up for Senator Cruz’s hearing on ANTIFA were unwilling to criticize them
@SenTedCruz has a hearing on Antifa, and gets killer witnesses. Of all the GOP in the Senate, only Lee and Graham bothered to show up—and just for half of it.
But SEVEN DEMOCRATS rushed to the hearing room to be counted as supporting Antifa.
"I have worked undercover for months and I’ve seen with my own eyes how hundreds of so-called protesters work together to carry out acts of organized criminality against government and civilians."
.@HomelandKen says that out of 277 injuries to law enforcement officers from rioters, 113 have been eye injuries from lasers. pic.twitter.com/ez2MC0YmTr
Some are surprised, even shocked that Senators are defending people who are either burning down or attempting to burn down federal courthouses and attacking federal officers and police.
I’m not, this is a perfectly rational reaction on their part.
Public stances not withstanding they know they are dealing with homicidal maniacs, who have enlisted useful idiots to commit violence, they also know that said homicidal maniacs & their useful idiots have gone after political allies including the Mayors of Seattle, Portland and Oakland, even to their own homes in order to intimidate them and keep them in line in they deviate even one bit from their desired memes.
Given those facts it’s completely rational that Senators and Governors and Mayors would make it a point to not to say a bad word about the homicidal maniacs and useful idiots of ANTIFA. It makes even more sense when said Senators, Governors and Mayors have been using the same police and law enforcement whose job it would be to protect them from said homicidal maniacs and useful idiots, as punching bags for the last three months or more.
In fact it’s even more rational for MSM reporters to kowtow to the homicidal maniacs and useful idiots of antifa because unlike the Senators Governors and Mayors trying to defund and handcuff law enforcement, they do not have said police protection at their beck and call.
So while their actions might be despicable and dishonorable, they are entirely rational when dealing with such folks. You could ask Principal Bowen’s character from Stargirl about that but, alas she is no longer available for comment.
Note: The final episode of season 1 of Stargirl will be unlocked Sunday at 11 PM EST on the DC Universe livestream site and will be broadcast on air on the CW the following day. If you have an interest in the show this would be an excellent time to binge watch the 1st 12 episodes before the season finale. I suspect you’ll enjoy it.
We interrupt our series on a world without police in order to explain to Allahpundit, whose take on the President and Seattle is clueless on Seattle:
It’s the Insurrection Act debate all over again. Rather than wait for evidence that local cops and the National Guard can’t deal with the problem themselves, he’s trying to bigfoot local officials by inserting the military into the situation. He really wants a presidential show of force against Americans to underline his “law and order” message.
and explain exactly what Trump is doing.
What’s most odd about this cluelessness is that he almost gets it when he gives POTUS advice on what he should do.
Trump should skip the tough-guy chatter and instead calmly emphasize that a Democratic-run city can’t be trusted to protect its own citizens from woke thugs. Turn up the heat politically on Inslee and Durkan by focusing on their complicity in the takeover, minus any threats. Let voters draw their own conclusions about whether to empower Democrats at the national level this fall.
What Allah doesn’t understand is that this is exactly what POTUS is doing by tweeting the whole “you handle it or I will” stuff because he understand DaTechGuy’s 3rd law of media outrage that states:
The MSM’s elevation and continued classification of any story as Nationally Newsworthy rather than only of local interest is in direct correlation to said story’s current ability to affirm any current Democrat/Liberal/Media meme/talking point, particularly on the subject of race or sexuality.
At a time when the Democrat / Media / left is desperately trying to spin away any contention that they want to disband and/or defund police (not to mention whitewashing protests and looting in general and ANTIFA in particularly the last thing you need is a black ANTIFA warlord taking over parts of a Democrat city, beating people who disagree with him ,extorting cash from merchants and building a friggen wall around the area becoming a national story.
Or do you think it was a coincidence that the Governor felt safe in pretending he had no idea what was happening
He knows the media is in the tank for the Democrat / Antifa / left . As long as the national media continued to ignore or downplay the story he could pretend it wasn’t happening and minimize any Damage to the Democrats both locally and nationally.
However once POTUS Tweeted what’s going on in Seattle becomes a national if not an international story. Now it forces a response, and from some a really stupid one as even Allah notes:
It says a lot about the country in 2020 that both the governor and the mayor thought there’d be more political benefit from goofing on him and his demands than from siding with him against an armed occupation of several city blocks:
Click to view Durkan’s full tweet and you’ll see that it contains some raised-fist emojis — at a moment that part of her own city has been declared off limits to police by “armed paramilitaries.”What?
emphasis (but not BOLD in origination)
Actually it says a lot about both the Governor and the Mayor. They “goofed” on him because to do otherwise brings more attention to their productions of #cluelessinseattle than the President already has.
The reality is thanks to his Tweets Trump can’t lose here. If Durkan or Inslee take action, he can say it was his due to him prompting, but if they don’t every day Mayor Durkan and Governor Inslee play #CluelessInSeattle is a win for Trump and a loss for the Democrats, a loss that the can emphasize in a single tweet at any time without warning to emphasize any individual act of outrage by the “autonomous community” or cowardice or indecision by the Mayor & Governor. (In fact I was was POTUS i’d use the hashtag #cluelessinseattle while doing so.
He can let this simmer for weeks while assigning a General to plan on how to retake the area giving time for a detailed plan to be developed and the forces and resources needed to carry it out can slowly and quietly be marshaled while state officials ditther.
But there is no need to hurry. After all the people of Seattle freely chose Mayor Durkan and the people of Washington freely chose Governor Inslee and I suspect President Trump will wait until all the plans are made and everything is ready to move at a moment’s notice, so that when he decides “enough is enough” he will be able to strike, quickly and decisively.
Until then with no more than an occasional tweet he’ll let the people of Washington State in General and Seattle in Particular enjoy the production of #CluelessinSeattle getting as all voters in a republic do, the results of the government they deserve, good and hard!
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