Observations on Federal Law Enforcement Actions in Portland

49 thoughts on “Observations on Federal Law Enforcement Actions in Portland”

1. Great! Let’s hope you are right. Now for the obvious — but!

   But, is there any indication that Democrat politicians, prosecutors, attorneys, police chiefs, etc have any desire to rein in Certain Black Life Matters rioters? Do we have any confidence in the FBI, after all the high level corruption we have seen in the “Justice” Department since President Trump was elected.

   No doubt, we have the technology to bust the CBLM rioters wide open. Do our Betters have the will to do it?

2. Gavin Longmuir:

   That is indeed the key point. How much of our government is working for outside entities? We will see. If they refuse to do anything, or turn on the elected President, the game will definitely be afoot.

   Subotai Bahadur

3. What is going to be interesting to me is the timing of the sweep to pull in the perps. If the White House were the one driving the pace, I would expect it around Labor Day. Give them another month. Much later and it is going to look too political, but would probably be less so. October would appear to be part of the election surprise, but I think in reality means the opposite – that the bureaucrats are driving the timing, and are dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. (We are facing something similar with the Durham and maybe Jensen investigations). As we saw with the government COVID-19 responses, one of the problems inherent in such is the inherent desire of bureaucrats for completeness. If it were totally up to the bureaucrats running and staffing this operation, they would probably take a couple years to make sure that they had everything right. But even if we didn’t have ongoing people being injured, and massive property damage, if Trump loses, everything gets dumped, and the perps walk.

4. “ Given the tendency of Antifa/BLM groups to mob lawmen removing their members. The Feds here were simply applying the least violent tactics.”

   Tell me that you have personal knowledge here, or at least that great minds think alike. I have been throwing that out the last couple days in places like the Volokh Conspiracy. For me, it was a wild assed guess. It is what I would be doing, if I could, if I were a supervisor running the investigation. I have seen multiple videos of one of the crazies attacking A LEO. Maybe throwing objects at them, aimed at injuring them. Etc. The LEOs grab the crazy, and try to subdue them. At which time a bunch of their confederates then rush the LEOs, trying to liberate them, screaming at the LEOs to release them, give them back, etc. the obvious intent is to make arrests painful enough that the police don’t push them as hard.

   There are laws on the books about resisting arrest, and trying to injure LEOs. But we are seeing in places like NYC what happens when bail is eliminated – the people attacking police are often out on their own personal recognizance before the LEOs they injured are out of the hospital. That kills morale, while turning the laws that are supposed to protect them from this sort of stuff into a revolving door. My question there is, was the timing of this, right before the riots, coincidental? Or was it part of a larger plan? I could go either way. We know that these riots were planned and trained for at least since last summer, and that at least some of those funding this (I.e. Soros) plan at least several years out. On the flip side, the No Bail policy had engendered a rapidly rising level of lawlessness in the cities and states that have implemented it, and that helps their cause almost as much as the riots have.

   Of course, this is why the left has had a meltdown about the “nonviolent protester” (ha!) who was supposedly grabbed off the street by the feds. They don’t have a handle on the feds, and are desperately trying to get one. The feds don’t operate under local control, and are thus much harder to intimidate. They can still require bail, or even remand. And they can easily move their prisoners out of state, if they have to. No surprise that major Dem politicians are starting to jump on this, demanding explanations. One weakness there is that the only way that they can really force answers out of these agencies is with House hearings. And they tend to appoint committee chairs by seniority, and not competence (which is why the impeachment was run by Schifty and his HPSCI, and not Waddler and his Judiciary Committee, because the latter has shown himself grossly incompetent). Nevertheless, I expect House committee hearings on these deplorable techniques- because they appear effective.

5. The FBI, NSA, and the other three-letter agencies are gathering information about Antifa.

   Can we hope our government isn’t completely subverted by likes of Strzok, Hiss, Wallace (Henry, not George), Oppenheimer, Rosenberg,…

   All that data and network information wouldn’t be used under a Biden/Harris administration, except as a list of who to reward with a corrupt government job.

6. My gut says we are going to see rounds of mass arrests based on the data these systems are gathering.

   Right before the mass arrests for the fraudulent Russia probe. And decades after the mass arrests of communist spies in the State Department. And before the mass expulsions of Leftists from universities and schools. And…

   Even as SF alternative history this isn’t credible.

   And I dearly hope a year from now after Trump’s second inauguration, I’m proved so wrong I have to write under another assumed name.

7. The Dems are simultaneously using antifa to intimidate their opponents a la their use of the klan as well as to try to goad Trump to respond overwhelmingly.
   Nancy Pelosi’s recent tweets are absolutely vile. What a loathsome creature.
   Liberals seem to think that the US government is so powerful it *could* impose a military/police state and yet so weak that Trump (who they think is a feeble minded dementia patient) can sieze that power for himself. And of course they hate the military and police as being capable of seizing power, but have zero problem with the surveillance state being used to spy on their political opponents.
   I would say that the cognitive dissonance is amazing, but let’s face it, they are completely consistent–they believe that they and only they should have power and anything they need to say to justify that is allowed.

8. >>Right before the mass arrests for the fraudulent Russia probe.

   The difference between the Antifa situation and the Deep State is exactly the subject of this post.

   We are discussing Antifa “perp walks” and there have not been, and likely never will be, “perp walks” for the illegal surveillance of Pres. Trump.

   >> My question there is, was the timing of this, right before the riots, coincidental? Or was it part of a larger plan? I could go either way.

   What AG Barr is working through for Pres. Trump is that the FBI and much of the DoJ are unreformable institutional instruments of the Left.

   The problem for the Left here is that other Federal Law Enforcement Organizations (LEO) do political factions too.

   The Federal LEO’s in Portland are not from the FBI. They are from other agencies, and in particular Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the main, the Federal border control mission is “conservative” in that it is something the Left hates on an identity basis and has attacked I.C.E. for years from the outside rather than subverted from within. The Left never bothered too subvert I.C.E. because the RINO presidents sat on ICE, and the previous Border Patrol, just as much as the Democrats.

   Additionally, Pres. Trump has showered money, new hires and yes built a wall and enforced immigration laws that made I.C.E.’s job easier and raised their status inside Federal Law Enforcement.

   So given a willing AG, willing Trump appointed Federal attorneys, and a Federal LEO with skin in the game for arresting the Left. Neither the Left nor the Congressional GOPe has a handle on this line up vs. Antifa.

   You can see why Portland Democrats and speaker Pelosi are wigging out.

   The Federal institutional script with regard the Portland government’s acting as a sanctuary for Antifa is a Federal take over a’la the Teamsters Union via racketeering laws and the appointment of a Federal “special master” to clean house.

   I will also note, that if there are every middle of the night arrests of major Deep State figures in the FBI or CIA, it will be an I.C.E. tactical team executing the arrest warrant in Washington D.C.

   Simply because I.C.E. is much less likely to leak to the Deep State before the warrants are executed.

9. This:

   >>The FBI, NSA, and the other three-letter agencies are gathering information about Antifa.

   …is not correct.

   The NSA as a matter of course gathers information on _everyone_ and is the gate keeper for other Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies to access that information.

   The highest level of access to this data base is the Secret Service Presidential Protective detail. Their access is near unlimited as their role in protecting the President and their other protectees.

   The members of the presidential detail always become the senior managers of the Secret Service in part because of the special clearances they have to access this data.

   Pres. Trump has hired heavily from the military special forces — from outside — to fill the Secret Service Presidential Protective detail and from the Trump empire to replace Secret Service IT at the White House.

   Pres. Trump’s corporate security and the current Secret Service Protective detail work hand in glove. They have to, given Mar-A-Largo is the de facto summer White House.

   This has all sorts of implications as far as “Big Data” is concerned in that the Trump corporation had sophisticated counter-intelligence big data capabilities to keep organized crime from stealing the Trump hotel-casino’s blind. That Secret Service threat profiles of everyone in-near Mar-A-Largo are in Trump corporate security hands, are enhanced with Trump IT’s Big Data, and are feed back to the Secret Service is a given.

   The very public arrest of a female Chinese intelligence operative planting surveillance devices in Mar-A-Largo was a very public message to a whole lot of people, only some of them foreigners, about that relationship.

10. DHS uses unmarked vans for arrests because those are full of electronic surveillance equipment, as Trent describes. Those are more information-gathering vans than arrest vans.

    I suspect a massive RICO (Racketeer-Influenced Corrupt Organization) investigation is going on which includes judicially-approved wiretaps of the Portland Mayor and all members of the Portland City Council, who are very much targets of the investigation. Every member of a criminal conspiracy is liable for all acts of the conspiracy. Arson, assault, and vandalism are predicate RICO acts. Creative prosecutors can frame conspiracy charges, notably the object of a conspiracy, so as to drag in a lot more perps than you suspect. The Portland Mayor and Councilmen have no idea what is coming at them.

11. Bruce,

    Investigations of large criminal conspiracies typically take a year or two before charges are brought.

12. The writings of one Carlos Marighela are worth looking at, as well as the run up to the fall of the Weimar Republic. The Communists first strive to produce civil unrest and uncertainty, then direct action, and then still more of the same, hoping that in the chaos they can gain power. What usually happens is that they get Nazis and helicopter rides.

    Mark my words: What we see going on here is precursory to classic urban guerrilla warfare. They are setting the conditions, or so they think, for “fundamental transformation”, having failed to accomplish it through the ballot box and corruption of the institutions (Obama’s gig).

    Where this ends? No idea, but I won’t be surprised or sorry when the counter-reaction takes place, as it did in both Germany and Argentina. Gonna be an awful lot of soy-boy wannabe revolutionary types whining as they’re loaded into the cattle cars and helicopters, and given that they plan on putting the rest of us there, if they win? F**k the lot of them.

    That’s where this ends, though: Them, or the rest of us. The wannabe “revolutionaries” might want to consider that their program has never succeeded in even a moderately prosperous country with a decent standard of living for the majority–It’s always ended in tears for them, as the normies look around, realize they’re on the chopping block, and fight back. The second American Civil War is going to be a nasty thing, as those “redneck unreconstructed uncle” types realize that their darling college-educated nieces and nephews intend to replay the Killing Fields (whether they know it consciously or not…) and the rednecks decide to act first and firmly. Families are going to blow apart, and you’re going to have people killing family members out of fear they’re going to be “denounced to the mob” and/or the authorities.

    Thank George Soros or a leftist for all this, preferably just before you put the blade in, or place the muzzle against the back of their head. They’re making it inevitable.

13. yes marighela, his thing was an urban guerilla foco, as opposed to largely rural examples, as had happened in cuba in 1959, but the model didn’t carry forth in venezuela, peru, and a host of other countries,

    reference in the le carre love note, drummer girl, he should have known it doesn’t work very well in itself, in brazil, uruguay, chile, argentina, honduras or guatemala nor colombia, to cite a few examples they succeeded in nicaragua, which didn’t have much of urban paramilitary presence, they half succeeded in el salvador, but the junta there, decided to take an example from it’s nearby neighbor, of course that refloated joan didions career, and made ray bonners, but ultimately they didn’t get very far,

14. Miguel Cervantes
    they half succeeded in el salvador, but the junta there, decided to take an example from it’s nearby neighbor…

    The Salvadorean Army committed more than its fair share of atrocities. What most critics of those atrocities neglect is that the record of the FMLN/guerrillas suggests that in power, it would have done about the same. For example, the “elections” of guerrilla leaders were often decided by the bullet.

    Roque Dalton, poet and member of the guerrilla ERP, was killed in 1975 by a group of ERP commandos- including Joaquin Villalobos. Roque Dalton wanted the ERP to “establish bonds with civil society.” Those who disagreed killed him. At the time, the ERP accused Roque Dalton of being a CIA agent. BTW, Roque Dalton was a cousin of pop singer Linda Ronstadt- IIRC first cousin first removed.

    Mélida Anaya Montes, a.k.a. Ana María, was killed in 1983 by fellow Salvadorean revolutionaries in Managua. She led the faction that favored negotiations with the government. At the time, the FMLN hierarchy blamed Salvador Cayetano Carpio for her death. Cayetano Carpio subsequently committed suicide.

    I guess those were early examples of Cancel Culture. Suggest the “wrong” policy, and you will get cancelled- permanently.

15. The one thing about the left that you can count on is that they will always, always take up violence as a means to their ends.

    Dates back to the Russian Anarchists who assassinated Czar Alexander II, who was in the process of conducting most of the reforms that the “activists” were demanding.

    The reality is that the left is mostly nihilist in nature, more concerned with destruction than creation, and far more dangerous because of it. Personally, it is my opinion (based on the ones I’ve met, over the years…) that most leftists are mentally ill, unstable, and entirely too dangerous to allow near any levers of power. Left to their own devices, they inevitably turn into Pol Pot or Lenin.

    We’re getting dangerously close to the point where killing them out of hand is going to be adjudged mere self-defense by history–Which is what the Argentinean helicopter rides really were, when you look at it. The cancer is going to have to be excised, one way or another. Either that, or we must resign ourselves to an interregnum in the camps, which most of us will not survive.

16. “Dates back to the Russian Anarchists who assassinated Czar Alexander II…”
    Uh, no, dates back to the French Revolution.

17. @Brian,

    Mmmmm… I dunno. I see a fairly clear line between the Jacobins and the later anarcho-nihilists that took inspiration from them. Before the Revolution, the Jacobins were content to just write and did not take up the bomb-throwing tactics of the idiots in Russia. They certainly went nuts once in power, but the whole “let us gain power through terror” thing was not one of their preliminary vices or tenets. I think the actual French Revolution came as a bit of shock to them.

    The Russian nihilists that contributed so much to the flavor of the left in our era were a different breed, dreamy darling little shits who just wanted to kill for the sheer feel of it all. Just like the assholes they inspired in Serbia, who tore down the entire world after killing a man who probably sympathized more with their cause than they or their handlers really did.

    It is darkly ironic that these sorts of people have done more to prevent fixing the things they say they want fix through killing men like Alexander II and Franz Ferdinand, both of whom were reformers. It would be an interesting thing to see the alternate worlds where those two lived, and we didn’t wind up killing millions in the killing fields that eventually followed them. Even a halfway-reformed Imperial Russia would have been a really big thing, and if the Austro-Hungarians had wound up coming under the leadership of Franz Ferdinand, without the fratricidal war his death caused…? The world would certainly be different, and to be hoped, better.

18. The mistake is believing that the powers pulling the strings of any of these groups actually could be satisfied by or even desire the goals that they so vociferously advocate. The Serbian secret police that bankrolled Princip certainly had no desire to reform the Habsburgs. Francis Ferdinand was an especially relevant target for them because he might have been a decent ruler.

    In the same way, the present anti-fa is actually an attempt to install a Fascistic regime here with those that are behind the foolish cannon fodder in the streets, in charge. They gain nothing from compromise, only from annihilation of all opposition. You’ll know that the battle has moved to the next level when they go after people like Pelosi, Biden and Sanders, not Trump.

    I hope that the feds are finally showing some competence, I just hope it occurs to them that they actually have a deadline. If they meet it, we’ll probably find out eventually to what extent they have already infiltrated these groups. Otherwise…

19. These rioting idiots simply aren’t thinking things through. If law enforcement is denied the ability to detain lawbreakers, then there are three possible outcomes.

    1) Law enforcement simply will not show up when they are needed. Since they won’t be allowed to do their jobs, why bother?

    2) Law enforcement will simply not bother to detain lawbreakers, and just apply punishment on the spot in the few moments they have possession of the lawbreakers.

    3) Law enforcement will simply not bother to attempt to take lawbreakers into custody, and use lethal force at the first sign they are being mobbed.

    I find all these alternatives far less preferable to letting law enforcement detain people and turning them over to the courts. But that’s the way the mob is pushing.

    Of course, this is all based on the courts actually doing their jobs. With places like New York simply releating those detained without bail, often putting the rioters back on the street before the police they have injured are released from the hospital, then we’re seeing the courts work hand-in-hand with the rioters, and the above three options all become more likely.

20. Jenos: Antifa in Portland and Seattle are like the KKK in the old South, in that they have tacit approval of the authorities. They are untouchable. The local cops are under orders not touch them, and the local DA won’t prosecute them.

21. Kirk: Well, of course leftists from the late 19th/early 20th centuries are different from those in 18th century France, but during the revolutionary period leftists turned irrevocably towards violent elimationism as their basic approach, because they were basically surrounded by enemies on all sides, both inside France and out. What they have to sell is astonishingly unpopular. That was Marx’s whole project, to come up with some rationale why, i.e. “false consciousness” and other assorted idiocy.

22. no they are like the iww in the early party of the 20th century, the french and spanish anarchists, the peoples will and the social revolutionaries,

23. It seems my post above was read by ANTIFA members or their fellow travelers.

    ANTIFA Black Block members destroying the “Amazon Go” store in Seattle yesterday were carrying umbrella’s over their heads to try and block Federal government digital facial recognition tools.

24. Finally, I see someone else who recognizes what is going on here. This is 1905, not 1917, and believe me, the red diaper babies know this history. Their goal in this phase of the insurgency isn’t to win, it’s to demonstrate to the people that their government cannot protect them.

    The urban guerrillas don’t know it, but they’re expendable to the leadership of the revolution. The leadership is building a broad-based coalition that includes the vanguard of the revolution, of course, but also fellow travelers and useful idiots. Fellow travelers are groups that don’t share the goals of the revolution, but share the goal of opposing the government. It never made sense for CAIR and the LGBTQs to be in an alliance, except as fellow travelers who share short-term goals. Useful idiots support the revolution against their own interests and don’t even realize it. Most of the young white college-educated women out demonstrating are useful idiots.

    The Bolsheviks were never more than 5 percent of the Russians, yet the coalition strategy worked. These folks are playing the long game
    It will be difficult to defeat the., and we will have to get a lot more serious about it than we have been.

    I have long predicted that the violence will escalate to bombings and assassinations, and that ICE and CBP facilities and officers will be particularly targeted. The Inauguration will be a bloody affair. I’m glad federal LE is trying to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand.

25. It’s nice to see the media confirm my observations —

    More Information, Photos Emerge Of ‘Elite’ Unit Deployed To Portland To Stop ‘Violent Extremists’
    By Ryan Saavedra
    Jul 18, 2020 DailyWire.com
    https://www.dailywire.com/news/more-information-photos-emerge-of-elite-unit-deployed-to-portland-to-stop-violent-extremists

    “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently deployed an elite unit of law enforcement operators to Portland this week under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.

    The New York Times confirmed an earlier report that identified the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, as the unit that was deployed to Portland as the city has been rocked by approximately 48 consecutive days of riots. Reuters reported that in addition to BORTAC, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are helping DHS’s Federal Protective Service, which provides security for federal buildings.”

    Reuters added, “A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokeswoman said on Friday agents had been deployed to Portland to support a newly launched U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unit, tasked with enforcing last month’s executive order from Republican President Donald Trump to protect federal monuments and buildings.”

    The CBP spokeswoman also addressed a video that went viral online that showed the federal agents taking a suspect away in an unmarked vehicle.

    “The CBP spokeswoman said the agency had information that person was suspected of assaults against federal agents or destruction of federal property and ‘a large and violent mob’ moved toward the agents once they approached the suspect,” Reuters added. “’For everyone’s safety, CBP agents quickly moved the suspect to a safer location for further questioning,’ the spokeswoman said. She said agents wore a CBP insignia during the encounter, but that their names were not displayed to protect them against retribution.””

    >Snip<

26. Trent, they’ve done the umbrella thing for a long time. Same reason they wear masks and try to prevent their faces from appearing on cellphone video. They know that FR is being deployed against them.

27. Trent, there was video analysis by Thomas Wictor/Carlos Osweda of plainclothes LE mingled in during the DC demonstrations signaling particular individuals to be arrested. One was caught with a rock hammer breaking pavement to make rocks to throw. That may be the same unit.

28. The whole Covid-mask situation is unfortunate, in that before the supposed pandemic precautionary measure went into place, you could simply make a policy of shooting anyone and everyone wearing a mask. Of course, today you could say “mask, black hoody, and a backpack…”, and maybe get the same effect.

    And, it will come down to shooting, make no mistake of that. That’s the goal they’re working towards, although I’m pretty sure the foot-soldiers aren’t being told that up front. The agents provacatuers are hardly going to tell their victims what the plan is, are they?

    They want to provoke a reaction, and they’re going to keep poking the normies until they do. Thing is, it’s all going to end the way it did in Argentina, and a bunch of people are going to wind up taking one-way helicopter trips. Or, they’re going to take their game to the countryside, a la their beloved Che, and make the same discovery that he did: Countryfolk don’t play that crap. They will, however, follow the shoot-shovel-shut up protocol with a lot of enthusiasm.

29. “They want to provoke a reaction, and they’re going to keep poking the normies until they do. Thing is, it’s all going to end the way it did in Argentina, and a bunch of people are going to wind up taking one-way helicopter trips. Or, they’re going to take their game to the countryside, a la their beloved Che, and make the same discovery that he did: Countryfolk don’t play that crap. They will, however, follow the shoot-shovel-shut up protocol with a lot of enthusiasm.”

    I’m not seeing the problem here, Kirk.

    I just read about a pack of thugs attacking a support-the-police rally in Denver… where the cops basically stood by and let them beat up the organizer as well as attack conservative pundit Michelle Malkin.

    Cops had better decide whose side to be on, and quickly.

30. “Cops had better decide whose side to be on, and quickly.”
    Stand by as Michelle Malkin and friends get assaulted, and you get to come back tomorrow and keep collecting your paycheck.
    Intervene, and you’re going to instantly become the new poster child for police brutality, and your career and life as you know it is over.
    What do you expect most people to choose?

31. @Brian,

    Which is why the current model of policing is going to go away. There is nothing to say we need to keep doing it this way, and the fact that they are standing aside while the leftoid freaks beat down the normies is just going to accelerate the whole thing. No doubt that Malkin is now wondering why she’s paying taxes, so she can watch the law enforcement she pays for stand by while she’s beaten for expressing her opinion–Which is in favor of that law enforcement.

    I imagine that a learning event has taken place.

    I further surmise that she will shortly realize that a “law enforcement” agency that is captured by her ideological opponents is essentially worthless, and make the correct inference. End result? She’s not going to support “law and order, bias edition” anymore.

    This ends with the entire paradigm of law enforcement in this country evaporating, with something else replacing it. Likely vigilantism, followed by something else, maybe a libertarian sort of contract law enforcement as imagined by a few of our libertarian types.

    We didn’t always have things done the way we do them now. Once upon a time, places like San Francisco relied on what were essentially mercenary private security forces, that were contracted and granted powers of arrest and detention. Maybe we ought to go back to that, and be able to sue the shit out of the parties that chose to stand by when these things happen, in breach of their contract.

    As it is, with qualified immunity? You can’t do squat to force the state-supported police to do their damn jobs. Supreme Court has even backed that idea, which in my mind means that these tax-dollar financed agencies need to be shut down. If they’re not accountable for not doing their f**king jobs, what the hell is the point of paying them? If you can’t sue them for malfeasance or malpractice, then why are we paying to support what amounts to state-sponsored terrorist organizations?

    As I keep telling my cop friends–“Dude(s), everything is going to be the same, until it isn’t… One day you’ll go to work, just like today, and the next, you’re going to drive by overturned patrol cars in “nice” neighborhoods where the residents are dancing around the flames while the officers in that patrol car burn to death…”.

    Take a look around you, right now, and then tell me I’m appraising the situation incorrectly. BLM is really only the tip of the iceberg–That case in Houston, where the drug cops shot that couple to death? The guy in Arizona, Daniel Shaver? White guy, shot while trying to comply with incoherent instructions from the cops?

    Yeah. Things are gonna change for cops. Hard.

    And, they damn well should, I’m afraid.

32. Cops had better decide whose side to be on, and quickly.

    I expect that recruitment to those fed agencies is probably going to be pretty easy form a while.

    The young white women who are screaming at cops from 6 inches away are pretty confident that nothing will change. We’ll see.

33. >>Trent, they’ve done the umbrella thing for a long time.

    Not in Seattle or Portland. Those were ANTIFA sanctuary cities.

    Umbrella use there is a change up in ANTIFA tactics based on facing Federal lawmen they don’t control.

34. Wildly stupid. You guys are on a roll. ;)

35. Throw those who would overthrow America into a pit of despair. Like they would do to us.

36. Yeah, Pen, como quieri (whatever).
    If you get on flight tracker RadarBox long about 6pm mountain time, you can watch a surveillance flight (shown as a helicopter, transponder -Blank-) leave McCord AFB south of Seattle and motor down to just north of the Columbia River, and set down. Probably drop off/ pick up and refuel. Then takes off and seems to spend the night orbiting Portland (sometimes going dark), with a few returns for fuel. Note that it’s doesn’t go to Portland Intl (PDX) and the attached national guard facility. Evidently they feel it’s being watched.
    Just what I’ve been seeing…

37. There may be some hope for Dallas at least.
    https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-warned-them-dallas-police-chief-had-nearly-700-protesters-taken-into-custody-for-blocking-highway

    Stopped it early, before anything could develop. The “demonstrators” seem to have cooperated by corralling themselves on a bridge where both ends could be easily blocked by police. Probably won’t make the same mistake again.

38. In related news, one of the “peaceful protesters” in Minneapolis seems to have won the big prize.
    https://nypost.com/2020/07/21/body-found-in-building-torched-during-george-floyd-protests/

39. Cops had better decide whose side to be on, and quickly.

    It seems to me that the decision has already been made for them, by the local elected government.

    If that displeases the local public, then they will soon have the opportunity to vote that government out, at least in theory.

    If that does not displease the local public, then it can vote for the same bunch, and watch their city burn. I think U.S. Grant is still correct- the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it. And the best way to get a failed local government ousted is to let its malicious incompetence shine like a beacon to inform the ignorant and the misled.

    In other words, I don’t think the burning and rioting in cities controlled by leftists is a vote-getter for them.

    I suppose we’ll find out though.

40. You have heavily armed federal troops arresting graffiti artists and the like in American cities. This is a winning strategy for Trump?

41. “You have heavily armed federal troops arresting graffiti artists and the like in American cities. This is a winning strategy for Trump?”

    Howdy, Mayor Wheeler! How’d that strategy of engaging with Antifa work out for you? Oh yeah, we all loved your ‘I see nothing wrong here’ while Antifa tards were yeeting flaming debris onto a federal courthouse.

    *snort*

    And now to those of you who rightfully questioned my ‘whose side will you choose’ comment: I agree there’s a paycheck involved. But how good is the paycheck and pension when one false move gets you tossed under the bus? And when the loons are screaming ‘abolish the police’, do you really think you’ll still be employed if they get their way?

    But fair enough. I will suggest this, though, to all law enforcement: If you see someone fighting back, you better go blind and deaf and not interfere on Antifa’s behalf.

    “Just following orders” doesn’t sound any better in English than it does in German.

42. You have heavily armed federal troops arresting graffiti artists and the like in American cities.

    Did you miss all the burning buildings? No, wait- the Canuckistani media just didn’t tell you about them.

    But the yuge numbers of first-time gun buyers didn’t miss the fires, nor have they failed to notice the rioting. It took place where they live, not in a foreign country they know nothing about.

    This is a winning strategy for Trump?

    We’re going to find out, aren’t we?

43. “Peaceful protesters”

    https://bluelivesmatter.blue/video-coordinated-attack-by-antifa-leaves-49-chicago-officers-injured/

44. Responding to PenGun is like responding to graffiti in a public toilet.
    Although graffiti is usually not malicious.

45. Responding to PenGun is like responding to graffiti in a public toilet.

    My interpretation varies.

    I think it’s like playing internet on extra-easy mode.

    I’m used to disagreeing with people who can frame an argument and who also plainly understand reality.

    We’re disagreeing about how to interpret events and what we should do about them, like grownups.

    PenGun tees up silly and hilariously ignorant comments and we all get to hit softballs out of the park, if we want to bother.

46. Graffiti is harmless. What you have now, is the beginnings of what is normally called a Police State. But then putting people in jail, is one thing America is world champion of.

    Still, do you think this helps Trump?

47. Graffiti is harmless. What you have now, is the beginnings of what is normally called a Police State. But then putting people in jail, is one thing America is world champion of.

    Aaah, this is so cute. I just want to scratch PenGun behind the ears and make him purr, like my cat.

    Kitty kitty kitty, yay…

48. MCS,

    The Dallas City DA and Dallas County Judge released all 600 arrested by the Dallas Police Department (DPD) with in hours with no prosecutions.

    The reason the stuff stopped was in processing all 600 arrestees, the DPD identified the outside Leftist & Soros funded organizers and their money trails.

    That is, the DPD finger printed, scanned driver licences, recorded credit card numbers and cell phones for each arrested person and then put that data into a LEO data base the Feds have access too.

49. I’m sure your right. The charges at that time would have been about the equivalent of mass jaywalking. They didn’t have a chance to do more and once on the bridge, were trapped with nowhere to go except through the police lines and nothing much to destroy.

    The lesson is that they weren’t given time to stew, the instigators and agitators couldn’t get anything going before it all collapsed and everyone was given a chance to try to figure out how they were going to explain getting arrested to their boss. I don’t pay much attention to Dallas City politics but for a very blue group, they are capable of showing occasional good sense and the police couldn’t have handled it better.

    There was a certain element of luck when the “demonstrators” made the tactical error to try to cross the bridge. The police showed that they weren’t going to cut them any slack. They probably could have contained them pretty much in any block, it was just very easy on the bridge.

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