Thursday night protests: more of the same

I won't waste too much bandwidth on last night's episode of Portlandia Protestia. But it could count toward a B.S. in Journalism.

The demonstrators (maybe about 100) went back to the South Waterfront immigration jail and did their usual B.S.

The federal troops and the Portland police showed up and did their usual B.S.

It went on for several hours.

Apparently an unhappy guy with a business nearby came out of his shop, accosted the unruly dissidents, and buzzed his Taser at them.

Three protesters were arrested on charges that will probably be dropped. At least one protester was hit with a tear gas grenade and suffered an injury. The official police version is here.

A different group marched around North Portland, including past the police union office, and as best I can tell, nothing much happened there.

Meanwhile, the mayor, F. Ted Wheeler, Tweeted out a reminder that when it comes to fighting racial injustice and police brutality, he's on the case. You can read his 19 talking points here.

But a plan to end the unrest, which is about to enter its fourth month? He doesn't seem to have one. So we continue to get pointless vandalism, arson, police brutality, and danger, punctuated with the occasional serious injury, night after night. One can only imagine how much it is costing taxpayers, not to mention the bad optics it presents on the national political scene.

For a guy running for re-election, Wheeler doesn't seem to be trying too hard. He reminds me of Frank Ivancie. Wheeler's opponent, Sarah Iannarone, would probably be even worse in a situation like this, but one thing for certain is that the mayor is not handling it well. He's probably losing votes every day on both the left and the right.

Oh, well. It's still summer. Have some ice cream.

Comments

  1. Both Wheeler and the Mayor of Chicago have taken decisive action to prevent violent protesters from disrupting life in their respective cities... but only where they live. The Mayor of Chicago has set up a secure zone on her block even as the Magnificent Mile begins to resemble war-torn Syria. In a related move, Mayor Wheeler jumped all over the autonomous zone that was going in by his building, even as he made a ridiculous statement that part of him wishes he was with the protesters protesting himself. So he's okay protecting where he lives, but for those of us who live in the rest of Portland, we're pretty much on our own. But it's only been 80 days. And the genuine protests against police brutality have morphed into an anarchy festival. That's how noble these leaders are: They're so committed to the cause that they're even sticking with it after it's morphed into something else. But don't be fooled - this approach clearly isn't just spontaneous virtue signaling. This is orchestrated from the top. The Dems have seized upon supporting the "peaceful protesters" as a political strategy. The party platform may say not to defund the police, but the rioters whom they are enabling want that, along with no prisons and a bunch of other fringe ideas the voters aren't crazy about. In short the Dems are running against law and order as an election strategy and good luck with that. And they're taking this stance - not because they're noble - it's because they think its a winning move. And that's the dumb part. They believe the voters looked at Nancy Pelosi in African garb kneeling for 8 minutes and thought, "My, she really has a good heart." They never considered that many others were thinking, "What an outrageous phony." Of course, the future is impossible to predict. To be fair, the plan could work. But there's a good chance that come Election Day, this dubious strategy could take a lot of them right over a cliff. Then they'll get to sit back and realize their "noble" inaction just gave us 4 more years of Donald Trump.

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