Okay, after months of madness and rants, time for some (mostly) upbeat news. So here we have positive political developments, scathingly rational commentary, and even a couple of charming monkeywrenches. Enjoy.
- “The Rebellion of America’s New Underclass” by Joel Kotkin.
- Sooooo very typically politically sneaky and snaky, if true: Money donated to Black Lives Matter, specifically earmarked to defund police, is going straight to the Joe Biden campaign. (I haven’t verified this.)
- Glenn Greenwald (who, along with Matt Taibbi is one of the few rational, liberty-respecting voices remaining on the left) excoriates the politicians and so-called medical experts who performed such a magical about-face on coronavirus rules when street protests began. (H/T S)
- And here’s another surprising view from the left. Whoppi Goldberg speaks out against censorship.
- The mob wants to cancel an Oregon mayor for being insufficiently woke. He turns the tables on them.
- Be courageous, stand firm, do not kneel to the mob.
- The first big cracks have finally appeared in the horrific, bizarre, cruel, and unjust doctrine of qualified immunity for murderous police officers.
- And Rand Paul has introduced a bill to end no-knock warrants.
- When police in Minneapolis stepped back, a small business owner formed her own armed neighborhood defense force.
- John Wilder, in that truly unique style of his, explains recent changes in fractional reserve banking with Muppet jokes, Lady Gaga, and Johnny Depp. (Did you know that, in March, the required reserve was reduced from 10% to 0%? I didn’t.)
- So how long did it take for the new socialist paradise in Seattle — the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ — to require and acquire borders, ID checkpoints, armed guards, a police force upholding arbitrary laws, and an unelected dictator? You guessed it: no time at all.
- Oh, and the traditional Socialist paradise hunger arrived in zippy time, too. Hilariously.
- Eaton Rapids Joe has a solution to all that. It would be monumentally unfair to the innocents living and working in the CHAZ, but it’s funny as hell and gives the new nation exactly what it claims to want.
- Is anybody still thinking about the census and how best to non-comply? Turns out that Robert Heinlein and family pranked the census taker, clear back in 1940. (H/T C^2)
- There are big ways to answer invasive government. And there are small, but enduring ways get your point across. Here’s a tiny response to a “taking” that’s lasted more than a century. (H/T CZ)
- Finally, if you want to do a good deed for a small business destroyed by the riots — and a very important business in this case to those who love science fiction — please consider donating to the GoFundMe for Uncle Hugo’s and its companion mystery store, Uncle Edgar’s. The fundraiser is sadly only about 1/4 of the way to goal. Defend liberty, literacy, hope, and civilization. Help Uncle Hugo’s rise from the ashes.
A general H/T to JW, source of several links and reliable discoverer of interesting news.
Um…
ID’s, checkpoints, warlords
Turns out none of that is true, you’re not that far, perhaps you could visit and see
I stay out of Seattle even in good times. I’m going by videos and multi-sourced reports.
What counter-info do you have? I’ll be glad to take a look.
Talking directly to people who live in the area and have visited CHAZ, people I trust and have no reason to lie.
Regarding CHAZ, I just heard a resident of the area that’s been taken over say that it was racist for the Police to abandon that neighborhood to antifa – because they would never give up control of a black neighborhood. What? Good grief.
“Talking directly to people who live in the area and have visited CHAZ, people I trust and have no reason to lie.”
I respect that people have different experiences and different subjective impressions.
At the same time, I have no reason to believe that the videos and reports I’ve seen are fake.
I’ve also heard reports that businesses in the zone are being extorted to support CHAZ, but because there’s less evidence to support that I didn’t include it in my list.
JS — The reason it’s racist is simple. It’s because everything is racist. (But I agree that the idea that that cops would abandon a white neighborhood and would never abandon a black one is ever-so-slightly mind bending.)
Yes, everything sure is. The tolerant crowd, the coexist drivers … they’re certainly focused on skin tone and gender. It’s too bad really, … as they’ve told me for years that shouldn’t matter. And I agree. I hope they come back around to coexisting.
*They called 911 for a dumpster fire?
Yikes, comments already.
My quick one:
CHAZ, the free zone.
Like it.
Trust they are working on foreign trade relations.
Expect they will need to.
(Hey, more links here, and their links, to chase down…)
🙂
I’m approximately 7000 miles from Seattle, so like I said, I have to go by the eyewitness accounts of people I personally know and trust, who all say the nonsense put out by the SPD (and even they have walked back their claim of businesses being extorted) but since I’m not there personally I just have to trust those who are.
I’ve even heard the SPD is still patrolling the neighborhood.
Like I said, you could go see for yourself if you so chose, you once went to personally check out a rumored FEMA camp, and found that story to be nonsense, so I don’t quite understand why you wouldn’t want to see for yourself.
Looks like Raz Simon the warlord of Chaos City;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8415565/Rapper-Raz-Simone-accused-warlord-Seattles-police-free-CHAZ.html
has some plaining to do;
https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1271161384575750144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1271161384575750144&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redstate.com%2Fsister-toldjah%2F2020%2F06%2F12%2Firony-overload-autonomous-zone-warlord-may-soon-be-canceled-after-old-homophobic-tweets-surface%2F
“You once went to personally check out a rumored FEMA camp, and found that story to be nonsense, so I don’t quite understand why you wouldn’t want to see for yourself.”
You have a good memory. I did go to the supposed camp, and found a touching, and very different story from the FEMA camp claims. I also went to Ruby Ridge, where it was obvious at a glance that the feds were shamelessly lying. No one could have stood on that ground and believed the feds’ story, ever. Those were causes to break the heart while firing up the soul.
But I don’t go to Seattle. I don’t go for shows or dining or the symphony or the ballet or shopping or spa days. I don’t go for political rallies or to visit relatives or any other reason. Why would I go to Seattle to see whether a bunch of utopian Socialist authoritarian jackasses (as their own list of demands has shown them to be) are slightly different than in some details than some reports say they are?
It’s not like I’d go up there and find a free-market anarchist miracle or even a well-run “republic.” These people can’t even feed themselves, and are so naive they’re shocked when homeless drug addicts and winos rip them off. And that’s in their own words, not rumor, not propaganda. “Bring soy!” they say, “Bring vegan!” And they now may — or may not — have allowed their new nation to be co-opted by a rapper leading a gang of armed and nasty “police.”
C’mon. I don’t care two nits what happens to these SJW “demanders” or the thugs who may have latched onto them. I hope they’re allowed to play out their little power play so we can see just how it turns out. I hope no one hurts them. Far better to see them revealed as incompetent fools and repeaters of history than to harm them. But waste days, and put myself in potential danger, for a bunch of armed and posturing soy boys?
Um … no thanks, if I haven’t already made that clear.
Wow, those are some links, Comrade X, especially that last one.
Edward Bernays and Group Psychology: Manipulating the Masses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOUcXK_7d_c
(11.50)
Eye witness description of the City of Chaos;
“Peacefully challenged”
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/06/11/anarchists-in-seattles-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-start-their-own-victory-garden-are-in-for-the-long-haul/
https://mobile.twitter.com/GrillBorgar/status/1271071002005471232/photo/1
This is their skill level for “autonomy.” This is their level of real-world functioning.
They provide what one commentor at that first link rightly called an entertaining reality show. That’s about it. As “anarchists” or as community builders, they offer a great example of how not to succeed.
I’ve read so much conflicting stuff (I won’t give it even the status of “information”) that I have no idea what to think about CHAZ, other than that it’s another example of misinformed selfish SJW behavior.
I’m happy to let it sputter out on its own, which it will, without external support.
However there’s a report of a counter-movement.
I intend to take a knee toward the mob. It’s my preferred way of steadying my rifle.
But I had the foresight to abandon the Puget Sound region in 2019, so I’m unlikely to need to do so.
The Real Kurt
Speaking of Matt Taibbi (as I did in the original links):
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself
“However there’s a report of a counter-movement”
Whoa. Now that could get interesting. Not so interesting that I’d want to be within 100 miles of such an encounter, but certainly interesting in the Chinese-curse sense.
The mob gets worser and worser, egged on by conveniently hypocritical politicians:
https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2020/06/12/amazing-trump-just-got-democrats-to-defend-a-criminal-anarchist-mob-n2570564
As I write this- Saturday night June 13-14th- I am watching a Wendy’s burger joint in Atlanta burn. The video was posted an hour ago. A sorry state of affairs. The legitimate protests over the murder of George Floyd are over. Now they are just retarded criminals showing off their stupidity. Black lives DON’T matter. If they did, black people in Chicago would not have killed over 2 dozen blacks last weekend. BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER.
“The mob wants to cancel an Oregon mayor for being insufficiently woke.“ – so “Struggle Sessions“ are back in force I see…/s
In this Rolling Stone piece (see below) on “canceling” Olivia Benson (Msriska Hargitay in Law and Order), there is an interesting statement that “Revolution can’t be built on the backs of the exceptions,…”
My understanding is that all revolutions, both good and bad, ARE built on the backs of the exceptions. It takes the exceptional person(s), and the exceptional idea/ideals, to motivate and execute a *successful* revolution.
And it takes the good (the “perfect”?) to stand up and be counted when any degree of the “bad” is presented by comparison.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/rolling-stone-magazine-olivia-benson-law-order-canceled
Maybe it depends on how you interpret “the exceptions”.
Found on Lew Rockwell this a.m.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/daisy-luther/an-eye-witnesss-shocking-account-of-whats-really-happening-during-the-seattle-riots/
We’ve been watching for the wrong symptoms; coughing, fever, respiratory distress. But Covid isn’t really a virus. It’s a brain disease, and the main symptom is that it makes people stupid.
Last night I drove through a burger place. The clerk no longer takes your debit card. Instead the card reader, on its cable, is jury-rigged to a handle so they can stick it out under the plastic shield that blocks most of the window. That way customers can put their own card in. “You don’t even have to touch the screen,” they say.
Today I went to the office supply place for toner. The debit card reader no longer allows people to select an email receipt, because O.M.G. germs on the screen.
It does, however, still require everyone to touch the screen to select whether they want cash back. And of course customers have to press the keys to enter their PIN.
I just finished proofing a story for our newspaper about how the local ISD is already starting to plan just how they will open schools in the fall. (Hint: It won’t be “Open the doors and let the kids in.”) We’re in the middle of building a new junior high school, which was designed to protect students from active killers. Turns out that makes it difficult to socially distance.
I’m getting really tired of the stupid.
[…] Freedom. that should have been included in Saturday’s Roundup, but was missed by yours truly. Friday links. I hope this means that she is back to posting on a more regular […]
Antifa gets routed:
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/idaho-citizens-patrol-streets-to-protect-their-city-from-antifa-and-looters/
Money quote: BLM says, “There have been a couple guys trying to silence us, but the Trump supporters down there are helping keep it under control,” one demonstrator said, referring to the militia members as “unofficial guardians” of the protests. “We won’t be silenced, and I guess I’m glad people with guns are here to make sure that happens.”
Glad you got a chuckle! Yeah, the 0% surprised me – I only found out about it while researching the post to make sure my facts were right. Not like they publicized that one!
P.S. SELL MORE BOOKS!!!