Posts Tagged ‘riots 2020’

Attn Allahpundit Trump is Making Inslee’s and Durkin’s production of #CluelessInSeattle Go National

Posted: June 12, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, crime, media, News/opinion, politics
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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

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/06/10/thats-news-to-me-washington-gov-jay-inslee-gets-the-giggles-when-asked-about-seattle-being-taken-over-by-anarchists/

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!

After the riots, my walk down Chicago’s Magnificent Mile

Posted: June 7, 2020 by John Ruberry in business, crime, culture, economy, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Chicago’s largest shopping district, and its best-known, is North Michigan Avenue, which is just north of downtown. It’s known internationally as the Magnificent Mile. 

The Mag Mile is dominated by luxury department stores and boutiques, including Nordstrom’s, Bloomingdale’s, Cartier, Macy’s Tiffany, Burberry’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Rolex, and many more. 

So naturally it was a target of the Antifa-driven riots of last weekend in Chicago. 

I was on the Mag Mile Thursday. Nearly every building was boarded-up at street level. Not all were looted, I assume. But who knows?

Someone tried to break down the glass doors at Rolex apparently with a sledgehammer, after which another hooligan sprayed “F*ck Trump” on one of the shattered doors. 

Spontaneous protests aren’t attended by sledgehammer wielding thugs carrying cans of spray paint.

Many stores were looted–probably most. 

There’s an American Girl Store on the Mile–it was boarded up. The Disney Store on North Michigan was not the happiest shop in the world–it was sealed off by plywood too.

There was rioting and looting all over Chicago and in the suburbs. On a personal note the area where I live, the inner northern suburbs, was not hit by rioting and looting. 

The George Floyd homicide was an abomination. But I don’t believe there is any justification for the rioting, looting, and the arson, the latter of which didn’t strike the Magnificent Mile. 

The Illinois lockdown is harsh. Dine-in restaurants are still closed–outdoor dining was allowed on May 29, except in Chicago, which had a June 3rd partial re-opening date. Many of the aforementioned retailers had been closed since late March and were looking at a June 3 reopening. 

Then came the riots. 

Chicago and Illinois’ recovery from the Great Recession was a slow one–political mismanagement, corruption, and unfunded pension liabilities saw to that. And those three underlying failures, particularly the pension bomb, have gotten worse since then. 

Chicago and Illinois seem destined for more misery.

I want to add one more thought. Police brass botched the initial response to the downtown and Magnificent Mile riots. The Chicago River draw bridges were not immediately raised, an opportunity to block or at least separate the mob was lost. And Chicago police officers were guarding Chicago’s 18 miles of lakefront parks from walkers, runners, and cyclists, as they have been for over two months, while the riots and arson raged. 

Those cops are still at the lakefront. 

Anger–and stupidity–rules Chicago.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Four Questions for The Democrats, the Media and Black Lives Matter

Posted: June 5, 2020 by datechguy in crime, culture, media
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The Democrat / Media / Left have managed to insert quite a few false premises into the national conversation thanks to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. Before I agree to consider accepting them I have four questions that need answering

Question 1: Why does the Democrat/left BLM think it’s OK to lump all Police in with a bad cop in Minneapolis but objects to lumping all protesters in with rioters, looters & arsonists

Question 2: How is it that The Democrats / left / media insist that guns can only be trusted in the hands of the police and government when they also insist that police can’t be trusted to use force?

Question 3: Right now the big twitter trend is on the left is #DefundThePolice If the Democrat/left/BLM believe there should be no police then who should enforce the law? What happens when a person assaults or robs or murders someone. Who will they go for protection? Gangs? The army, The Mafia? Privates organization of Citizens? Or will they be expected to defend themselves (without arms if the left has their ways?

Question 4: Since the Media the left and blacklivesmatter insist that the statement “all lives matter” is beyond the pale can they tell us do

  • Hispanic Lives matter
  • Jewish Lives matter
  • Arab lives matter
  • Oriental lives matter
  • White lives matter

If not why not?

I submit and suggest that pols, corporations and individuals considering supporting would be well advised to get answers to these questions before they do.

Update: Happiness is an instalanche on a post 30 minutes before your livestream podcast where you are about to discuss it goes live. You can watch it here

Update 2: if you missed the podcast here it is

Update 3: Related. Ben Stein’s list on looters is pretty good too.

Fitchburg 11:30 AM Wednesday June 3rd. Update 12:51 AM Thursday

Posted: June 4, 2020 by datechguy in crime, culture, media, News/opinion
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I am scheduled to work on Wednesday from 3:30 till Midnight so as I write this I have no idea how things went in the 1st of two Fitchburg “protests”.

Wednesday’s protest is sponsored by 3 pyramids a local black organization and is scheduled to be a march from Crocker Field to the City Hall (I presume the temporary city hall as the regular one is under re-construction) and is supposed to begin at 2:30 which is just about the time that I will be finishing getting ready for work.

I took a drive, both to pay the water bills but actually to scope out the route. Externally things seem to be OK there is a city crew watering the common and clearing a monument, people are at Market Basket there is some traffic but thanks to the covid stuff the streets are pretty empty. I’m informed by DaWife that the local Dunkin Donuts has closed it’s lobby at noon but other than that I’m not aware of any other business closing although as you can see by the picture Enterprise Rent-a-Car has boarded up their windows (but oddly not moved their cars to a different location. While on social media there is at least one report of bricks hidden under some debris I scoped the potential path and didn’t see this, and I was looking for it.

Local business that would be in the path of any crowd that got out of hand that I talked to are worried but see little they can do about it. At one business an employee was instructed to close up & get out if there are sirens indicating trouble to close and leave. They seemed resigned that what will happen will happen, but people are on edge.

These are the days I miss the World War 2 generation and the Sicilians that once lived in the patch.

It’s very possible (even probable for Wednesday’s protest) that there will be little or not trouble but the potential is there, fed by the media and the desire to turn a local crime in Minnesota into a national story for the sake of scoring election points.

Here is the video I shot, sorry about the quality as I was walking with no monopod.

Again I am writing this at 12:52 PM EST on Wednesday. By the time this posts we will know if Fitchburg had a protest or a riot or both on Wednesday but the results of Friday will still be up in the air. But this description of previous protests from the Sentinal & Enterprise tell me that whatever happens will be spun to death:

On Sunday, peaceful protests were carried out in Boston throughout the day until the demonstrations turned violent in the evening, with reports of fires being set and looting.

Boston police later released a list of the 53 people who were arrested after the violence began.

In Worcester on Monday, thousands of people demonstrated peacefully during the day to protest Floyd’s killing. However, things took a downward turn at night when some demonstrators threw rocks and police in riot gear used tear gas to disperse the crowds.

God willing we’ll have good news.

Update: Got out of work at midnight it was a 20 minute drive back to Fitchburg and I checked out the area, I saw no signs of damage so I presume everything was peaceful or at least under control.

Several notes:

When I left for work I made it a point to drive toward downtown. There was a chopper hovering over the center of the city. Not sure if that was the authorities or the media.

Espresso’s pizza whose manager I interviewed a bit ago during my american success story series which was directly in the line of march of the protest as scheduled was simply plastered with Black Lives Matters signs all over the place. I don’t know if this was cheap insurance or not but the windows were all whole. Perhaps next time I order I’ll ask if my life and my family’s lives matters to them and will decide if I order then again based on their answer.

There was a solid police presence both on main street. Cruisers seems to be strategically placed to keep an eye on key spots from the policeman’s monument to key intersections. I saw car in the parking lot of the temporary city hall in a line that would block access to anyone attempting to drive by. There were a group of men in the lot, I presume officers. I presume they will be there for a while till the morning.

I saw very few people on the streets, when I stopped at Espresso to read the signs one person walking by seemed almost smug bragging about Fitchburg because there was no trouble. I pointed out that the Tea Party had held events on main street and protests and prayers had been in front of the planned parenthood that moved into town and no businesses had worried about violence or felt the need to close. But as violence & rioting (frankly there’s not much worth looting here) to my city was a worry I don’t mind grading them on a curve for the day. I also noted a few people in odd places who seemed to be watching things. Not sure who or what they were and frankly after a late night at work didn’t feel like checking

As I headed home from downtown I noted that Domino’s which is usually open till 2 AM was closed. I turned around to check out way and saw a sign on the door saying: “We are closed so our employees can support black lives matter.” Again I don’t know if this is their feeling or if it’s insurance but I’ll be sure to ask if my life and my family’s life matter next time I order.

When I got home I was told things were quiet but was also told that the National Guard was in town deployed at the Civic Center for a time but I’ve found no evidence of it online of course I’m not on facebook so I don’t know if there is some info there.

When it comes down to it, the bottom line is no trouble at least not yet. Hopefully the weekend with be the same, if it is I’ll be pleased but I still resent the fact that I had to worry about my city , my friends, my property and my family because the MSM decided to elevate a local story to play politics.

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