Recently I moved to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a very clean and safe city, albeit one with a lot of homeless people allowed to camp out on the street. Crime here is miniscule by the standards of Chicago – rather than seeing murders every day (with multiple murders and shootings compressed into one story since it isn’t “news”), you can actually see leading news stories about a guy who got his bike stolen, with a picture of the thief from a security camera.
Now Portland is in the national news for a different reason. After the election, protestors have been taking to the streets. I was in a cab back from the airport Thursday night and my twenty minute ride became a 1 1/2 hour ride since the protestors were blocking bridges and highways. It was a bit unnerving because you were just sitting in traffic with no information and it could go on indefinitely.
The protestors have been walking through neighborhoods and shopping areas and blocking bridges and the police have mostly left them alone. They did break business windows in an area less than a mile from where I live such as this Bank of America ATM bank branch. They set a couple of fires in dumpsters too. But generally they were pretty calm and the police followed them and didn’t bust their heads, Chicago-style.
I think many of the protestors were not happy that the anarchist or “black bloc” type protestors had joined their ranks and were smashing windows and the like. Some of the protestors raised money or came out the next day to help locals clean up. I heard an anecdotal story about a store owner coming out with a gun in front of his shop; Oregon has very free gun laws and outside of the Portland main city (which is mostly full of liberals and transplants from California and the like) you’d be unwise to try to bust up someone’s home – you’d likely get shot.
The police are finally get sick of this. Last night I walked out to get a pizza and 2 police trucks drove by with riot police holding on to the side of the truck, ready to jump out and get into position quickly. There were a couple dozen officers on the two trucks and they were driving rapidly across Burnside (a main street) to deploy somewhere. The act of calling it a “riot” by police meant that protestors could be charged with a felony and the police were trying to separate the ones causing damage from the peaceful protestors.
We will see if this dies out soon. I will keep you posted from Portland.
Cross posted at LITGM
A whiff of grapeshot is what’s needed.
Stateside, Dearieme, we call that “buckshot”.
Dearieme, I like the historical reference, especially when the mob in this case was “royalist” in nature, as they didn’t like their “Queen” being displaced.
I read this morning that a “protester” was shot when the mob blocked a bridge and wouldn’t let a car across. In an interesting twist, the gunman was reported to be a young black man.
Inauguration day, in DC, will be a very dangerous place. I remember when Bush (W) won, he didn’t get to walk the entire parade length due to safety concerns. Trump’s will be even worse.
I’m trying to get my Tea Party to rent a bus for an excursion to DC to arrange a counter protest to the ones being organized for the inauguration. Anybody else up for this? We’ll bring our own trash bags again this time.
Grapeshot is (was?) bigger than buckshot: each ball is about the size of a grape or cherry.
News from Chicago: Group Yelling ‘You Voted Trump’ Beats Man In Intersection, Steals Car. [video included]
Police: Reported crime against woman in Muslim headscarf was a hoax
They- meaning the lefties- are not going to let up.
Dearieme:
Granting the difference in size between Grape and Canister rounds, and 00 Buckshot [.33 caliber; 8 per 12 gauge round], there is a another problem. I used to do living history for schools and the National Park Service, and am a qualified gunner on muzzle-loading artillery. Now, I happen to know where I could borrow a muzzle-loading cannon, but I would have to go to Denver to get it. I would have no idea where to get one, or the specific black powder to make rounds in Portland.
12 gauge Remington 870 and Mossberg 500 pump shotguns are ubiquitous in this country. As is 00 Buck ammunition. And you would be amazed at how distinctive the sound of racking a round into a 12 gauge pump is, and how far it carries. And the reaction it induces into criminal types. En-masse, 12 gauges could match the volume of projectiles downrange, can deliver crossfire, and can shift fire more easily as targets of opportunity present themselves.
Yeah, I know. I am not a nice person. ;-)
Your daily reminder that we staved off defeat more than we won, that we are still apparently outnumbered, that our enemies still control the battlefield, and that they are still our enemies. Who have taught themselves to hate our living guts.
https://ombreolivier.liberty.me/the-tolerant-liberal-reaction/
Nothing has changed. Keep your dukes up.
Oh, and do take note of get-our-way-at-all-costs hysteria that is being ratcheted up, not cooling down:
https://www.hotgas.net/2016/11/oregon-proposal-secede-us-withdrawn-bigly-negative-backlash/
http://calwatchdog.com/2016/11/09/ca-secessionists-set-sacramento-rally/
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti-immigrants-20161111-story.html
The Will to Power is alive and well in blue-state America.
Nothing has changed. Remember that.
I’m glad the Portland riots were tame. The G8 riots in Seattle were worse.
I’m getting out of California just in time. We made an offer on a house in Tucson today,
Good for you, Mike!
My sister and her husband are looking to move to Texas from California when her husband retires in a certain number of years. She wants to be near us – family, you know?
It all depends – we can get her connected to a couple of real estate experts; friends of ours, you know?
I have always maintained that San Antonio is the biggest small town in the world.
You’ll love this, though very, very NSFW
http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/11/video-jonathan-pies-epic-rant-blaming-the-left-for-trump-brexit/#more
Kudos to Tom Walker, who plays Jonathan Pie; I think he got it right. The elites did this to themselves by pushing support for Trump underground. They couldn’t measure it, analyze it, fight it, or measure how effective their counter measures were. Instead they doubled down on the same failed tactics used during the Republican primary, but they are clever and creative, Right?
These days it’s easy to riot and protest in the blue cities. There is absolutely no repercussion to doing so and Georgie might even pay you for it if you are lucky.
You could almost respect some of the protestors of old who had to face police more then happy to bust heads and confront them to maintain order. That actually took courage. Protesting in this era just requires a smart phone and a decent pair of shoes. The lack of confrontation emboldens them and they take full advantage.
Cops left them to vandalize and that is peaceful??????
Cops left them to block transportation and that is GOOD?
Why are we accepting lawlessness as the norm and even calling it peaceful?
WA state enacted by initiative process a slew of leftist desires.
I-1491 being the worst,see link. This passed overwhelmingly, which leads me to believe WA has now become CA north.
http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/10/a-resounding-vote-against-due-process-an
The initiative process was intended, I think, to give citizens of that state a way to go around legislative roadblocks. Now it seems to have become an ideal way for big money interests and a simple majority vote to impose their will on less populous counties.
The initiative vote on background checks for firearms in Nevada (essentially a renamed registration scheme) saw 15 out of 16 counties opposed. It passed with a 1% majority. This was an effort funded by Bloomberg, who is funding, along with a few other billionaires, all sorts of anti-gun efforts. This is precisely the kind of “democracy” the electoral college and state nominated senators were designed to protect against on a national level.
There is simply no way for citizens to counteract the astounding amount of money the leftist billionaires can contribute.
I’m watching Cory Booker on Meet the Press encouraging “resistance” to Trump. He covers himself by disavowing rioting but his meaning is clear.
He wants a “Progressive” DNC chair, which will guarantee the 2020 election is lost.
I was also wondering if he was thinking what I was. If Hillary had chosen him for VP, as I had expected she might, she might have had enough black turnout to survive.
Tim Kaine was a clownish leftist who, among other things, was a poke in the eye to Catholics. Trump mentioned that and Catholics make up a significant part of the Reagan Democrats.
Now, Ellison is on MTP. What the Democrats really need is a Nation of Islam DNC Chair !
I have to laugh at what I see from Democrats. I watched Stephanopoulis to see what they had to say. Bill Kristol looks like a guy with a bad hangover.
They seem to have no idea what to do.
California voted a state-wide ban on plastic bags. LA Count had such a ban but I thought Orange County was too sensible.
Nope, the market started changing for heavy plastic bags the day after the election. I thought I’d be gone before it took effect.
California and New York and Massachusetts are 1/3 of the Democrats.
Jason in LA: My alternate response is “Dang, how big are the buck out there?”
>Why are we accepting lawlessness as the norm and even calling it peaceful?
I dunno. Why are we accepting queers on the marriage altar (for the first and only time in human history) and queer sex ed (for ALL the kids, not just the unhappy souls who were molested and are now imitating the molester’s behavior) and grown men peeing next to little girls and whole colonies of imported religious fascists in places like Hamtramck and Dearborn and Twin Falls and Portland Maine…? Why has that all become The New Normal?
Time to grab those goddam vertical and horizontal knobs and do something about it. Kick your enemies at least as hard as they kick you. And never stop. They won’t.
“Why are we accepting lawlessness as the norm and even calling it peaceful?”
Well, it is Portland. Who cares ? Chicago, New York, Seattle and Portland deserve what they get.
A nation is its people, change the people and you change the nation. To add some spice throw in very divergent political views among the various peoples. Other than calling themselves Americans, what do those communist protestors have in common with Trump voters?
This is all a byproduct of ineffective elites. They nurtured racial, ethnic, sexual and ideological diversity in order to distract the masses from the earlier organized ethos of economic class warfare but these elites are the ones who are most dependent on a stable society being the bank vault into which their wealth is invested – they need laws respected, stable government, a more or less honest legal system, etc and what they’ve unleashed are forces which are leading to civil war because the people are now so divided that the nation cannot be put back together again.
On another note, it’s always good for the public to see leftists act out their true totalitarian nature so these protests against a legitimate election outcome are a public service.
“these protests against a legitimate election outcome are a public service.”
Yes, especially when they are burning down blue cities.