This is NOT how we should treat our veterans.
— VoteVets (@votevets) July 26, 2020
You know, the entire history of the USA begins with a few red coats' having snowballs thrown at them, panicking and firing a volley into a crowd. All as a result of having troops in the streets of a city that didn't ask for them, didn't want them and viewed them as invaders. https://t.co/jP8bWbDxpm
— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) July 17, 2020
As a Portlander, I wanted to counter the narrative that our city is no longer safe since it's being overrun by violent protests. So, I made maps for perspective on them.
(The yellow box is the overall protest area while the red is the most recent, headline grabbing protests.) pic.twitter.com/BB7DklYpwI
— D Paul Angel (@D_PaulAngel) July 24, 2020
Navy vet who says he was injured in clash with federal officers in Portland tells @ABC he wants to use attention on him "to refocus this whole discussion back to Black Lives Matter."
“If I had been a black veteran…do you think I would have gotten as much attention as I did?” pic.twitter.com/btq0wD61QH
— ABC News (@ABC) July 22, 2020
With sunflowers, helmets and googles, the Wall of Moms forms a human barrier between police and protesters in Portland, and offers a way for middle-aged white women to show solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter portland protesters https://t.co/euG10SiqoV pic.twitter.com/4PfUfRGPsH
— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 25, 2020
Donald's
Hate
Squad https://t.co/Dmioh4j63K— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 24, 2020
Don't want to romanticize FBI & mil who obviously have their own dirty laundry. But this is on the mark. No accident that DHS is taking lead here. A swirl of police agencies with ambiguous remits and toadies and ideologues at the top, all unconfirmed, ready to do Trump's bidding. https://t.co/8ZlJnQulXu
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 24, 2020
Portland resident:
trump's main concern in all of this is getting viral clips of amateur goons shooting unarmed protestors and he won't stop sending in more goons until he does. https://t.co/QZWFouMS5j
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) July 27, 2020
he also wants you to die if you’re a member of the secret police force deployed to portland, because imagine the ads he could make with that footage.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) July 27, 2020
the part that isn't said often enough is that he *also* doesn't care in the slightest about the brownshirts he's deploying here; he'd be even happier to see them killed in the streets than he would be a protestor.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) July 27, 2020
if you think a violent confrontation will help your poll numbers, it means that you're actively hoping americans kill one another to make you look better on social media. there's no other conclusion to draw.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) July 27, 2020
J R in WV
Good piece, Annie Laurie. Thanks!
First?
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: Second?
Carlo
I’m actually looking forward to Trump trying this shit in Chicago. I think Mayor Lightfoot would impound their vans, seal and search their offices, and have the Agent in charge arrested and chucked into a Cook County Jail and lose the paperwork.
HumboldtBlue
Let’s try this comment thing again.
AL, you’re really coming at it with the Malamud takes, I like it!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Oh my god. This man is a fucking monster. He’s talking about a mayor of a major American city getting tear gassed by his goons. This could be any of us.
My general impression is that people see Trump’s feds as making the situation worse. Is there any polling to that effect?
Wag
I am numb with anger, and despair about the future of our country. Trump is as close to the Anti-Christ as I can imagine.
Major Major Major Major
Today a DNC committee started marking up a draft platform. Several amendments were rejected. Guess which got more votes: Medicare For All or legal marijuana?
opiejeanne
Good post, AL. The business in Portland is very distressing and now Seattle has joined them on the hot-seat, in solidarity. Everything these goons are doing is bullshit, just pure bullshit, and people are going to die.
opiejeanne
@Wag: I have thought that for more than a year, and the Anti-Christ really isn’t part of my belief system, but he (Trump) fits the Biblical idea of him in so many ways I’m surprised that even the Christianists don’t notice it.
sdhays
@Major Major Major Major: I’m going to go with the pro-ganja amendment.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): that would be interesting to see. Obviously they are making it worse (anybody interested in protecting the building would just put up a bigger fence) but at a certain point too many people on both sides are just showing up to brawl. ETA The AP had a kind of harrowing story today by a journo “embedded” in the courthouse. Read it with a grain of salt but even then, pretty crazy stuff.
here it is: there was a journo with the protestors and one with the feds https://apnews.com/1dd1bb39093a3691f4e78093787ab877
sdhays
@Carlo: CPD is pretty bad. Will they follow her orders?
opiejeanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m pretty sure the”They knocked the hell out of him” comment referred to the Portland mayor getting beat on by the protesters. I don’t think he was the primary target of the tear gas, just got lucky.
burnspbesq
I wonder how Peter Baum (the first Oregonian to make a big splash in lacrosse and hero to all Oregon kids that play the Creator’s Game) felt after seeing that protestor use a stick to snag a tear gas canister and return it to sender.
sdhays
@Major Major Major Major: Putting up more walls around a building is definitely something Dump knows about.
I live about 25 miles from DC, but I haven’t been there in months – basically since the Dump plague descended. I was shocked the other day to see the walls they’ve put up since March. I used to live about 5 miles from the White House and would walk there in an afternoon. Even through a few embarrassing security breaches, Obama kept his cool and you could walk down Pennsylvania Ave. right up to the fence. Now there are these ugly walls that push regular people far, far away.
He’s such a fucking coward.
Major Major Major Major
@sdhays: the WH walls are crazy!! I saw a picture the other day, had no idea either.
Put those up in Portland, send the “troops” home, problem solved. If they were interested in solving the stated problem of course.
Carlo
@sdhays: I believe they would. People often fail to appreciate the power of the Mayor of Chicago has. Also, CPD as a body may not like her much, but they really don’t like the Feds at all. And in the end, orders are orders.
HumboldtBlue
@burnspbesq:
Is that the clip of the Fed getting hit in the face with a return shot?
sdhays
@Major Major Major Major: What’s “funny” about the walls is how he denied cowering in the White House bunker when the BLM protests got slightly heated – he just went for a routine inspection, of course! And now we see that he’s built the ugliest and cheapest of external bunkers in which to cower in comparative comfort.
HumboldtBlue
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s some both-siderism reporting right there.
Always amazes me when cops riot and it’s still our fault.
Brachiator
Americans don’t really have much actual experience with authoritarian regimes. Trump is stupid, and largely incompetence, but he has been stumbling in the direction of attempting to establish himself as a populist authoritarian.
He is using the DHS to establish a Praetorian Guard loyal only to him.
He has always hinted at wanting to be able to establish law and order, to suppress rebellion. And now he gets to brag about slapping an elected mayor around on his authority.
This will not end well if Trump is re-elected.
ETA. Funny how all those beefy Second Amendment Patriots have faded away. They bray about liberty and a government that they claim wants to take away their rights. But it turns out that they just want to secure the blessings of white supremacy.
Major Major Major Major
@HumboldtBlue: I thought it was cool to see the same night from each perspective (knowing full well how skeptical to be of embedded reporting), though.
Alison Rose
Some of the replies to the Vote Vets tweet make it even clearer than it already was that the SUPPORT THE TROOPS AND VETERANS!!!!!! screeching the right has always done is a bunch of bullshit.
And I swear, Trump manages to get even more disgusting every damn day. Someone needs to invent time travel so we can go back and stop his parents from ever meeting. Or interrupt their first date and be like “Listen, if you two bang, you’re gonna ruin this entire country in about 70 years, please for God’s sake, go find other people so your two gene pools don’t become a fucking swamp that gives rise to The Creature From the Orange Lagoon.”
sdhays
DC National Guard Whistleblower Details Tear Gas Op For Trump Photo Shoot:
noncarborundum
@opiejeanne:
I remember when there was speculation that Reagan was the antichrist because there were 6 letters in each of his names. Trump would seem to fail by this metric because it would make him 645. But maybe if we amend his name according to his paternal ancestry and add up the letters of “Donald Johann Drumpf”?
HumboldtBlue
@Major Major Major Major:
That was excellent reporting from the other side and the reporters deserve kudos for a solid informative and engaging story but it does reinforce the narrative the Feds are the real victims here, the ones most inconvenienced and in danger when they could be at home.
Major Major Major Major
catclub
@opiejeanne: i have been saying for years that irony is calling Obama the anti-Christ and then voting for the actual one.
Major Major Major Major
@HumboldtBlue
now that you mention it I do remember that being a recurring element.
H.E.Wolf
You may feel better if you remember what huge numbers of people of color and a great many white women and some white men have been doing for the past 4 years (2017 Women’s March, 2018 midterms, state legislatures and governorships flipped to blue, hundreds of US House bills passed by the Democratic majority).
You will definitely feel better if you pitch in and help in your own way. (I’ve been doing Tasks For Introverts, from home.) Think of it as honoring John Lewis. Get in some good trouble. :-)
Citizen Alan
@opiejeanne: I’ve said for many years now that most Evangelicals would voluntarily tattoo the Mark of the Beast on their foreheads if the Antichrist did a good enough job of appealing to their tribal bigotries.
sdhays
This has probably been covered in an earlier thread, but isn’t it bizarre that Dump’s National Security Advisor has COVID-19 and the White House is like “It’s no big deal, Dump and Dense never meet with this guy anyway.” I mean, it’s not surprising considering the current occupant, but shouldn’t that warrant some minor pearls clutching from the punditocracy?
Wag
@opiejeanne: I, too, am agnostic, verging on atheistic, but Trump Is making me believe that pure evil, the Devil in human form, exists.
Wag
@H.E.Wolf: I’ve been shuttling my 14 year old son, at his insistence, to BLM protests, and marching with him. It has been immensely rewarding.
HumboldtBlue
Native woman honors a neighbor who died of covid.
Alison Rose
@Major Major Major Major: ““In the graphic design process handled by an outside vendor, the photo was resized and a filter was applied, which appears to have caused an unintentional error that distorted the image,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement.”
A filter. Yeah sure. A filter that does nothing but make someone’s nose bigger. Cool story, bro.
Danielx
@Wag:
Yup. God seems to have on an extended vacation since 1914 or thereabouts, but the devil? Oh yeah, he’s real and he’s one busy motherfucker.
Major Major Major Major
@Alison Rose: I suppose it’s possible they hired a right-wing graphic designer and said “make him look sinister and greedy”, but like nobody looked at it after? Lol
dnfree
Here’s my question. I saw a video from the weekend of the Portland NAACP trying to refocus the protests on Black Lives Matter rather than on confrontations between mostly white people and the federal forces. Some articles say the early protests are peaceful, with the moms and dads and vets and all, but then when most of the peaceful protesters leave, the more confrontational group takes over. My impression from this video was that the local NAACP doesn’t think this is helping advance the cause. Does anyone have more information or insight into this?
different-church-lady
They’ve been saying we’re on the edge of Civil War for years now, but I never imagined it would be the President and the DHS on one side, and everybody else on the other.
Honus
@burnspbesq: as an alum of the defending NCAA lax champs I was pretty proud.
different-church-lady
@Citizen Alan: As long as the black family under the next bridge over is kept too poor to get the tattoos, they’ll be all for it.
Honus
@Citizen Alan: or promised a tax cut.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
That wouldn’t have stopped Fred. He was a bigger dick than shitforbrains, just without the level of power.
Alison Rose
@Major Major Major Major: I mean, I guess it was more subtle than that anti-Hillary ad covered in money with MOST CORRUPT CANDIDATE EVER written inside a Star of David.
H.E.Wolf
What you’re saying has some real truth in it. If I may, I’m going to point to some counterbalancing (and encouraging) truth.
The often-narrow focus of the mass media can lead us to forget momentarily that “American” is a very, very broad category. Many American citizens, naturalized and native-born, have indeed had experience with life in authoritarian regimes.
My father, who fled Germany in the 1930s with his family when he was a child; my aunt, who was interned as a teenager in a “relocation camp” in Arizona, along with her family; my co-worker, who when she was a young women escaped from Vietnam as one of the “boat people”; John Lewis in his teens and 20s, who was beaten and arrested many times in the segregated South.
All Americans. All contributing their experiences, their stories, to the reasons why we – collectively as Americans – will withstand the current would-be authoritarian regime.
/soapbox :-)
Honus
@sdhays: I mean which is more shocking? That the National Security Advisor, a cabinet level official and probably one of the 100 most protected people in the world, was exposed to the virus, Or that Trump has never met with him during a pandemic that is the greatest threat to national security in decades?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus: when Mary Trump was asked if she was surprised to learn her grandfather had attended a Klan rally, she said only because she didn’t see how he could have turned a buck out of it.
Major Major Major Major
@Alison Rose: oh god that’s right
oatler.
From K-Thug:
The point, instead, is that they’ve sacralized selfishness, hurting their own political prospects by insisting on the right to act selfishly even when it hurts others.
What the coronavirus has revealed is the power of America’s cult of selfishness. And this cult is killing us.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@oatler.: K-Thug sounds shrill.
JAFD
@H.E.Wolf: “Tasks for Introverts”, you mention. Might I ask you to post the URL, or other contact info, whenever convenient for you ?
Thanks, very much.
HumboldtBlue
A little levity perhaps?
It ain’t Hamilton mind you.
Trump in song.
gwangung
@H.E.Wolf: Indeed. I had relatives die under Mao. My co-producer’s parents fled from Vietnam. One of my close friends escaped the killing fields.
So, yeah, a lot of us have close experience with authoritarian regimes. And with communism and Marxists. Way more than so-called conservatives.
Kattails
@opiejeanne: Agreed. I double-checked what the seven deadly sins are, because Trump treats them like a to-do list. The commentary noted that Pride was considered the worst, because “it severs the soul from grace”. No apologies for anything, no backing down, no self-questioning or correction. Apparently not an ounce of humility or empathy or compassion.
I’m working on this angle because I really need to have a serious chat with my mother about voting & she’s conservative and a Lutheran. Living in Florida and making excuses for Deathsantis. I need her to grasp that a vote for this monster is going to sever her soul from those of her two daughters who will have to live with the consequences of her vote for the remainder of their old age. My expectations aren’t too high, but I’ve got to try.
In the meantime I’d better go restore my soul by giving the kitties their evening treats.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@H.E.Wolf:
@JAFD: I also to would like subscribe to a newsletter about tasks for introverts on political campaigns
oatler.
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Got it from Cole, if I remember.
patrick II
See these pictures from FOX of Jewish caricatures of NYT reporters who were critical of FOX.
Altered photos
frosty
Brilliant. And inspiring, thanks.
burnspbesq
@HumboldtBlue:
https://brobible.com/culture/article/portland-protestor-lacrosse-stick/
sanjeevs
Mitt and Susan Collins have said they will oppose the nomination of Judy Shelton to the Fed Board.
Shelton is another Trump whackjob who has said the U.S. should return to the gold standard.
HumboldtBlue
@burnspbesq:
Thanks, and that’s perfect.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
They’re sending more goons cuz they love the big black Cock’N’Balls donuts at Portland’s famed Voo Doo Bakery (link)
Yutsano
@sanjeevs: Get Murkowski, tie up Manchin and Sinema in closets, and her nomination is dead.
sanjeevs
@Yutsano: Manchin and Sinema will have no pressure to vote for her. She’s another Peter Navarro type – a lone oddball.
Murkowski might – would be a good way to distance from Trump
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sold torches, gasoline, rope?
Someone was going to, could have been Fred.
TS (the original)
@sanjeevs:
Collins concerned she may just be defeated in November
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I would be careful of overthinking Trump.
I think this is some kind of show put on by Trump’s staff to stop Dumb Ass Donny from screaming at them about the scary pictures on the TV. Notice that the “surge” at the other cities is more about normal Federal police work, ie it’s so when Trump watches Fox these cities are on the list.
I think the most worrisome thing about Trump isn’t what he is going to do it’s what others who come in the future might be inspired to from Trump’s antics.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Citizen Alan: Remember in the Evangelical narrative on the End Times the Antichrist is really sent by God to punish the bad people while the good people will magically fly off into the sky and safety.
lowtechcyclist
Now supposedly the Federal goons are there to protect the Federal buildings and arrest people who have committed Federal crimes.
Has any reporter asked Trump what crime Mayor Wheeler is supposed to have committed?
Yutsano
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: 144,000 of them, per their interpretation of Revelations. But they all believe only they have the magic ticket.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
Even though I’m an old Jesus freak, I think the whole End Times business is bullshit. But I’ve been saying for years that Trump is like your perfect dry run/proof of concept for the Antichrist. And wasn’t part of the deal that most of those who considered themselves Christians were supposed to be won over by the Antichrist and become his followers?
Evangelicals, of course, have always expected that it would be the devotees of mainstream denominations who would have that happen to them. Instead, it’s the evangelicals who’ve fallen for our proto-Antichrist.
Geeno
@opiejeanne: One of the anti-christ’s powers is to deceive and corrupt the faithful. And they willingly put the mark of the beast (MAGA!) on their own foreheads.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And according to this, the Feds admit privatetly they are losing in Portand.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/feds-wont-leave-portland-until-071500399.html
Uncle Cosmo
@burnspbesq: Repeat from a post below, just FTR: