Joe Biden isn't Bill Clinton. Not really the Sister Soulja moment some have urged.

More like praising with faint damns, as Wilde put it.

Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on the deadly violence in Portland

He blames Trump for inciting hatred and fear, not MSNBC, CNN, BBC, the NYT, and the Democratic propagandists and commentariat, generally.

He condemns violence "of left and right".

He focuses on killings.

And the rioting in general, the destruction of property, the economic and social damage, and the people hurt but not killed?

More than three months of riots by antifa, anarchists, BLM, racist radicals, and others of the idiot left in numerous cities across the country.

And it's been a long time since Charlottesville.

Biden Emerges From Basement, Sees Violence, and Makes This Unbelievable Statement

Snark? Scorn? This, too, is propaganda.

All the same.

It appears a Trump supporter was murdered by a leftist in Portland last night, but details are still emerging. 

Regardless of what happened, the shooting has finally prompted Joe Biden to denounce the violence in Portland that's been occurring on a nightly basis for three months now. 

"The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by any one, whether on the left or the right," Biden said in a statement. 

. . . .

Oh yes, I remember now. It was President Trump who encouraged chaos in the streets when he accused cops of being murderous racists, or when he said America was founded on white supremacy, or when he endorsed the vandalism of historic statues, or when he referred to looters and thugs as "peaceful" protesters as a violent mob raged out of control for months. 

That was all "fanning the flames of hate and division" all, right? But President Trump wasn't the one doing it. 

That was Joe Biden, the media, and the far-left radicals who will be running the government if Trojan horse Biden fools the American people into electing him president. 

Gaslighting: Blaming Left-Wing Violence and Rioting on Trump Is Brazenly Ludicrous

Once the violence spilled over into a small city in a swing state and public opinion started to shift, the Biden campaign finally rolled Biden out to condemn non-peaceful actions, which he's occasionally done with perfunctory statements. 

But his party ignored the issue in their four-night infomercial, elected officials have been bullied by the hard Left into deleting social media posts disavowing violence, and top Biden surrogates have contorted themselves to avoid saying anything too harshly negative about the rioters.

. . . .

As I wrote on Twitter, "there has been violence from the radical right in some cases, which is egregious, appalling and indefensible. Still, bothsidesing the violence & unrest is a form of gaslighting. The mayhem/rioting/looting/assaults has been profoundly asymmetric, and driven by the hard left." 

That's a fact.

Not a lot of social distancing at riots, either. Super-spreaders?

How far will this hurt Joe B in crucial swing states?

Will it even cost him Wisconsin?

538 says the polls there still look good for Joe B.

They think he has a 69% shot at an EC victory, with Trump trailing at 31%.

Maybe the "ride it out" strategy will work.

But nobody knows how to factor in the expected big increase in mail in and absentee voting 

A national pissing contest

Crazies of the left have caused no end of chaos and destruction in cities all over America, every day and every night, for more than three months.

And the crazy right?

What, a day and a night at Charlottesville?

Who is the grave threat to the republic, to democracy, to the rule of law, to domestic tranquility and ordered liberty?

Trump, too stupid, ignorant, and incompetent for the the role, and anyway with no institutional support to speak of, awaits his cue to step forward as . . . Pinochet? Fujimori? Franco?

What would that be like?

The second time as farce?

Or the third?

Whatever.

Andrew Sullivan seems to be back to blogging. About how democracies perish.

He just misses telling the horrible truth that the anti-democratic right are the legitimate offspring of their elders and legitimators in spite of themselves, the anti-democratic left.

It happened in Spain.

It happened in Weimar.

The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into

But here’s one thing I have absolutely no conflict about. 

Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. 

This comes first. 

If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. 

In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue. 

Disorder always and everywhere begets more disorder; the minute the authorities appear to permit such violence, it is destined to grow. 

And if liberals do not defend order, fascists will.

I don't live where the rioters are running free, and I doubt AS does.

And my one issue is that I will never vote for a party sworn to kill me, but will instead vote for the party sworn to keep me alive.

I crucially need both Social Security and Medicare to avoid ending my life sleeping in an alley, fighting stray dogs for pizza out of a dumpster.

The GOP is profoundly devoted to destroying both of those, called "entitlements", by the way, because having paid to support both all our working lives we who now depend on them are entitled to count on them.

And so far the Dems are committed to coming through for us.

And as I’ve watched protests devolve over the summer into a series of riots, arson expeditions, and lawless occupations of city blocks, along with disgusting and often racist profanity, I’ve begun to feel similarly. 

And when I watched the Democratic Convention and heard close to nothing about ending this lawlessness, I noted the silence. 

. . . .

When a political party finds itself so wedded to a new and potent ideology it cannot call out violence when it sees it, then it is walking straight into a trap. 

When the discourse on the left has become one in which scholars and editors and Tweeters vie with one another to up the ante on how inherently evil America has always been, redescribe it as a slaveocracy, and endorse racist books that foment the most egregious stereotypes about “whiteness”, most ordinary people, who love their country and are mostly proud of its past, will rightly balk. 

One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: 

“Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?” 

A cheap shot, yes. 

But in the current context, a political bullseye.

. . . .

And look at the icons Trump invoked: Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Davy Crockett, and Buffalo Bill. You can mock. 

But in the midst of a culture being redescribed by the left as a form of foul and relentless “white supremacy”, and in a moment of arson and rioting, it felt like a kind of balm. 

All this reassurance played out against a backdrop of Kenosha, which was burning, and Minneapolis, where a suicide led to a bout of opportunistic looting, and Washington DC, where mobs of wokesters went through the city chanting obscenities, invading others’ spaces, demanding bystanders raise fists in solidarity, with occasional spasms of violence. 

These despicable fanatics, like it or not, are now in part the face of the Democrats: a snarling bunch of self-righteous, entitled bigots, chanting slogans rooted in pseudo-Marxist claptrap, erecting guillotines — guillotines! — in the streets as emblems of their agenda. 

They are not arguing; they are attempting to coerce. 

And liberals, from the Biden campaign to the New York Times, are too cowardly and intimidated to call out these bullies and expel them from the ranks. 

. . . .

It was a sign that the establishment left were willing to tolerate disorder and chaos if they were directed toward the ideologically correct ends — which is how Democratic establishments in Minneapolis and Seattle and Portland responded. 

The NYT, CNN and the rest tried to ignore the inexcusable, and find increasingly pathetic ways to dismiss it. 

This week, their staggering bias was exposed as absurd.

. . . .

And let’s be frank about this and call this by its name: this is very Weimar. 

The center has collapsed. 

Armed street gangs of far right and far left are at war on the streets. 

Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. 

The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much.

And so on.

He pretty much predicts the worst, even if Biden wins.

Trump lies all the time, except when the truth makes him look good.

Trump: Protesters Your Ass, They Are Not Protesters; They Are Anarchists, Agitators, Rioters & Looters

And assholes, but he left that out.

President Donald Trump criticized the protests and riots that ensued in the streets of Washington, D.C. following his acceptance of the Republican nominee for president at the White House. 

Trump said Friday at a campaign event in Manchester, NH that they are anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters who do not get denounced by Democratic politicians.

"Today's Democrat party is filled with hate," Trump said Friday. 

That's a lie, but the Democrats sure are walking right into it.

Antifa and anarchists have no love for Democrats and may even hope their violence gets a win for Trump.

Maybe some of the BLM or other radical racial left, too.

"Just look at Joe Biden's supporters on the streets screaming and shouting at bystanders with unhinged, manic rage. Right? You see it. It's crazy. You ought to see last night in Washington, it was a disgrace. It was a disgrace that these people are representing the United States of America. It was a disgrace."

"Protesters. You know what I say? Protesters, your ass. I don't talk about my ass. They're not protesters. Those aren't protesters. Those are anarchists, they're agitators, they're rioters, they're looters. You say that and some of the people, not all of the people, back there how dare you? These are friendly protesters, right?" Trump said.

Do Trump's work for him

Wheeler just spent about five seconds deploring the shooting last night and the riots in Portland and then at least five minutes blaming Trump for it all and complaining about Trumpist counter-demonstrators.

He made it clear neither Trump nor counter-demonstrators are welcome, but he continued to defend the right and duty to speak out against racism by tying up the city and making a path for violence every single day for as long as it can be kept up as absolutely constitutionally guaranteed.

95 days so far.

A parade of public officials is endorsing the official Democratic view that defends and sides with the demonstrations and demonstrators.

Trump is right. These slugs will never stop this.

Wheeler is back telling everyone proudly he and local officials will do pretty much everything BLM and the others have demanded.

Everything that looks like "attacking systemic racism", that is.

Probably a lot of that in Portland, too, where the Dems have been running everything for about forever.

Guess the terrorists have won, eh?

But even Fox and Kelly Anne Conway are wearing yellow stripes down their backs.

Portland shooting leaves 1 dead as pro-Trump group clashes with BLM

The victim was pro-Trump and the Dems are blaming him for the violence.

What would they be saying if the victim had been a BLM or antifa type?

Trump rails against 'incompetent' Portland mayor, says 'backlash' involving supporters not 'unexpected'

A propos de reparations

Has anyone mentioned that blackmailers always come back for more?

The fearless troll in the White House, maybe?

I watched none of either convention. I would not have liked this choice for his major speech.

I opposed busing when Joe did and I oppose it now, by the way.

Biden’s Intended Race on Race

Biden’s speech told America all we needed to know about why Biden chose Harris — despite their acrimonious past — and where Biden intends to take his campaign over the next two months. 

If Joe has his way, this will be a race on race.

His acceptance speech’s first words, after “good evening,” were “Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way. Give people light, those are words for our time.”

Having connected his campaign message with “light,” he would use “light” repeatedly throughout his 25-minute address. 

Although lacking specifics, his subliminal racial message was clear: I am the anti-racist; if you are not with me, you are a racist or condone racism.

For those on whom such subtlety might be lost, he was explicit too. He called out “communities who have known the injustice of the ‘knee on the neck.’” 

Biden also listed “the most compelling call for racial justice since the ’60s” as one of the “four historic crises” he enumerated. 

When mentioning coronavirus’s economic impact, he singled out minority communities as “bearing the brunt of it.” 

Race was everywhere.

The speech’s fulcrum was the implication that Biden was doing far more than just running for president. 

Biden laid claim to leading a movement to complete the work of the 1960s civil rights movement. 

“History has thrust one more urgent task on us. Will we be the generation that finally wipes the stain of racism from our national character?” 

Biden even cited the Charlottesville protests of three years earlier as the motivation behind his campaign (despite not announcing for another two years): “For me, a call for action. At that moment, I knew I’d have to run.”

Biden has changed. Will the changeless Church change faster?

Will the Catholic Bishops Call Out Joe?

During the South Carolina primary, Fr. Robert Morey of Florence denied Biden communion on the grounds he had excommunicated himself by taking the stand he has taken on the killing of the unborn.

“Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other, and the Church,” said Morey. “Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself out of Church teaching.”

But subversion is rife in the Church as everywhere else.

Had moral truth changed? Did Catholic teaching change? No, Biden changed. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church still declares “homosexual acts” to be “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law” and describes “homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.”

Biden once believed this, or said he did for most of his life, for that is the way he campaigned in Delaware and voted in D.C.

What has changed is the Democratic Party Biden now heads. 

The precepts of LGBT now dictate “moral truth” in the party and platform of Joe Biden who now calls transgender rights “the civil rights issue of our time.”

. . . .

On right-to-life, the declared position of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is clear: “Taxpayer dollars should never fund abortion.”

This unequivocal moral stance is being publicly repudiated and will be rejected, should he win the presidency on Nov. 3, by the professed believing and practicing Catholic, Joe Biden.

What, if anything, are the U.S. Catholic bishops going to say about this grave moral issue in the fall election? Or will they remain silent?

The face of the urban Democratic Party

'Stay away, please': Mayor Wheeler writes open letter to President Trump

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler does not want federal law enforcement to return to Portland. He sent an open letter to President Trump via email on Friday, declining the president's recurring offer to send federal aid to the city.

"Dear President Trump," he wrote in the letter. "Yet again, you said you offered to aid Portland by sending in federal law enforcement to our city. On behalf of the City of Portland: No thanks."

Why That Letter Portland's Mayor Sent to Trump Just Blew Up in His Face

BREAKING: Activists occupy Portland mayor Ted Wheeler’s apartment and aren’t leaving until he: resigns, abolishes the police by 2022 with no tech or private replacement, and allots saved resources to BIPOC communities and city services.

BIPOC looks like an leftist racist/racial hate group to me.

Children of Zinn.

Rising Tide NA

Reportedly they left without seeing the mayor.

Looting goes mainstream on NPR

Is Steven Hayward right?

The whole thing is a window into the mental perversion of today’s left. 

A lot of people are attacking NPR for featuring such an obvious nut job, but I think we should thank NPR for giving such extended exposure to a view that is widespread in the Democratic Party right now.

If ever there was an opportunity for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to have a “Sister Souljah moment,” it would be right now. Anyone making book that they can do it?

The not terribly perceptive ultra-left at The Guardian is getting a bad feeling.

With Donald Trump and this election, it feels ominously like 2016 all over again

We could so easily step into another Electoral College victory for a populist authoritarian clown who loses the popular vote.

This writer is full of foreboding and doubts about Biden's stay-mum strategy, but had Biden spoken up much earlier and attacked the rioters from the start and equally hammered the leftism this writer so loves, where would the support of the Bernie Bros and racist/racial leftists have gone?

He doesn't see that it isn't Trump's entirely fictitious political genius that has made a second term increasingly likely.

Nor some lack of political wit on Biden's part.

He doesn't know to ask himself these questions.

Are the Democrats going to be sunk because their party so heavily depends on ultras whom they cannot get to the polls without embracing or appearing to embrace positions feared and loathed even by most Democrats, let alone the rest of America?

Or is that dependence merely a self-destructive delusion or poor strategic choice from which Democrats may yet hope to recover?

Though not before this election has run its course.

Perhaps losing twice in a row to a naked emperor with nothing at all to commend him but the deplorable talents of a clown might teach them that lesson.

A Democratic turf war is raging — even as progressives try to elect Biden

Is Biden Ceding the Law-and-Order Issue?

Just to clarify

Kneeling on the neck of an habitual criminal for seven or eight minutes until he dies is murder.

Shooting a fleeing habitual criminal to death as he flees when much less force would have worked is murder, even if some cop manual permits or even recommends it.

But I am not on board for the absurd mythology of overwhelming and overwhelmingly powerful racism, systemic or otherwise, exploited and spread every election season by the depraved propaganda of Democrats without concern for its destructive consequences.

And I am even further from on board with condoning or tolerating riots for three f-ing months.

Update 8/30.

George Floyd wasn't killed by Dereck Chauvin. He od'd on recreational drugs. The kneeling had nothing to do with it and was apparently by the book.

Jacob Blake's shooting might have been by the book. Seems he was a fleeing felon resisting arrest and had or was reaching for a weapon.

Where is Biden? Where are the Democrats?

This Is How Biden Loses

Increasing numbers of Americans are seeing Democrats as complicit in or at best tolerant and indulgent toward the mad rioters who are trashing so many cities.

This article and the alarm of so many Democrats are so many confessions.

George Packer at The Atlantic joins Don Lemon and others calling for Biden and Democrats to hammer away at the riots and rioters.

Every day of silence makes credible the Duce's charges Biden is weak, putty in the hands of radicals and a party taken over by revolutionaries and America haters, a Trojan horse for friends of antifa, the worst of the BLM crazies, and the Red Guards and Culture Warriors smashing and burning American cities.

Every day the Republicans turn up the volume on exactly these accusations and attacks.

But it may already be too late for the late conversion at the top Packer is calling for.

And too little.

The whole party is stained.

In the crude terms of a presidential campaign, voters know that the Democrat means it when he denounces police brutality, but less so when he denounces riots. 

To reach the public and convince it otherwise, Biden has to go beyond boilerplate and make it personal, memorable.

Harris, a Black former prosecutor and now an advocate for police reform, seems uniquely positioned to speak to the crisis. 

But she has said little all week, which suggests that there might be things she doesn’t want to say. 

On Thursday, Harris directly addressed the events in Kenosha, affirming that Americans “must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protesters. We should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence.” 

She quickly moved on. 

Democratic leaders, from the nearly invisible mayor of Kenosha up to those on the presidential ticket, are reluctant to tarnish a just cause, amplify Republican attacks, or draw the wrath of their own progressive base (Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut deleted a tweet saying that both the Blake shooting and the riots were wrong after commenters accused him of equating the two). 

So Democrats continue to mute their response to the violence and hope it will subside, even though it has persisted straight through the summer.

. . . .

On Tuesday night, the CNN host Don Lemon warned his colleague Chris Cuomo that riots were hurting Biden and the Democrats: “Chris, as you know and I know, it’s showing up in the polls, it’s showing up in focus groups. It’s the only thing right now that’s sticking.” 

Lemon urged Biden to speak out about both police reform and violence. 

With Kenosha and the political conventions, the coverage seems to be changing. On Thursday, the Times ran a piece headlined “How Chaos in Kenosha Is Already Swaying Some Voters in Wisconsin.” 

Half a dozen Kenosha residents, reckoning with damaged buildings and businesses, expressed displeasure with the uncertain response of Democratic officials. 

Ellen Ferwerda, an antique store owner, “said that she was desperate for Trump to lose in November but that she had ‘huge concern’ the unrest in her town could help him win. She added that local Democratic leaders seemed hesitant to condemn the mayhem.”

A bit more on the McCloskeys

Protesters are clearing a path for Trump

If there is a couple who have come to epitomize this fork in reality it is Mark and Patricia McCloskey. 

They are the couple from St Louis who made headlines in June when a BLM protest broke on to private property. 

Fearing for their lives, and their notably elegant home, the McCloskeys came out on to their terrace with their guns and stayed there until the protesters left. 

This week they made a five-minute appearance at the Republican convention.

. . . .

They are two law-abiding home-owners. 

A protest broke on to private property and they asserted their right as American citizens to defend their home. 

No shots were fired, yet thanks to the activist local circuit attorney Kim Gardner, the McCloskeys are now charged with ‘unlawful use of a weapon’, which is a felony. 

None of the people who broke on to the property have suffered any harm.

. . . .

But you know, a couple of months ago Mrs McCloskey was sitting in the home she and her husband had worked their lives to create. 

The mob started by shouting: ‘Racist!’ 

Audio of the event shows that at least one member of the crowd shouted: ‘We gonna kill you, bitch.’ Soon a man in the mob was screaming: ‘I’mma rape you, bitch.’

‘You can’t stop the revolution,’ the group’s Marxist ring-leader bellowed at the couple through a bullhorn as the mob milled. 

That ring-leader has since been given the Democratic nomination to enter the US House of Representatives as congresswoman for the area. 

GOP talking points urge Joe B was silent on rioting from the outset until just the other night, demanding why he didn't once condemn it all that time.

They are very boldly hanging the riots on the Democrats and Biden in particular.

Here's a disparity, if you want one

Took them ten seconds to decide to arrest that 17 year old kid, Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois, and charge him with first degree murder.

They shamelessly threw the book at him.

They have still not arrested Rusten Sheskey, a 7-year-veteran of the Kenosha Police Department who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times.

Blake admitted to police interrogators he had a knife and police say they recovered a knife from under the front seat of his car.

That kid didn't fire at anyone until he, fleeing rioters, fell in the street and the rioters kept on coming at him.

Van Jones on CNN at about 8:15 pm is calling the kid a "lawless vigilante" and no one is criticizing that.

He's called the kid that four times in three minutes.

Rick Santorum is calling the kid a vigilante, too!

If that was self-defense, and the news reports indicate it was, then it doesn't matter why he was there.

He was there legally and he was armed legally.

But even a second Republican is calling his shooting at rioters who were reportedly charging at him a despicable act that must be condemned.

Angry Hillary and her advice for Joe B.

Hillary Clinton urges Biden not to concede in close election

"Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out and, eventually, I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side," Clinton said in an interview with Showtime's "The Circus."

Clinton, who won almost three million more votes than Trump overall in 2016 but lost to him in the state-by-state electoral college count, suggested that the Republicans are hoping to get the result they want through in-person voting on the day -- and not necessarily wait for any delayed mail-in ballots to be counted.

Her comments follow warnings from both sides that the result of the election may not be known on the evening of November 3.

Republicans "have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting," she said.

"They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college on election day," Clinton said.

She called for Democrats to mount a "massive legal operation."

"We have to have our own teams of people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are going to put outside polling places," she said.

Republicans have reacted by saying the Dems are undermining an eventual Trump win in advance and will reject a Trump win as crooked.

They say the same about Dem complaints about the Post Office and Trump's refusal to give it money.

Silence as strategy?

Why no ads for Pam Iovino or Conor Lamb?

I've seen plenty for their opponents.

Kenosha as elsewhere

Daytime mostly just protests, nighttime riots.

Thank the unemployment and school closings and cancellation of sports caused by the virus for making thousands of people available with not a thing in the world else to do.

2 Dead, 1 Injured During Protests Over Shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha

CNN's Don Lemon says Kenosha violence hurts Democrats: 'The rioting has to stop'

It's not just Kenosha.

Trump and the GOP have successfully pinned the rioting in cities all over the country since George Floyd was killed on Biden, local Democrats in authority, the Democrats in general, constant agitation by BLM and violent leftist radicals, and egregiously biased coverage in Democratic media.

The police have still said not a word about the shooting.

Alternative facts

Democratic facts:

Trump's response to the virus has been undermined from the beginning by denial, lies, underfunding, delay, inaction, and shirking of responsibility. These have caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths so far, deaths that could and should have been prevented, and will cause perhaps hundreds of thousands before this is over.

Republican facts:

The response is agreed by medical authorities to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives so far and will save many more before this is over, compared with what would have happened if nothing had been done at all.

Fareed lauds Biden for big tent approach

He reminds us the New Deal and the Great Society were made possible by the biggest of tents in the history of the party.