Representative Sheila Jackson Lee grouses that only about 300 people have been imprisoned for alleged participation in the Capitol Riot; she thinks it should be more like 40,000. Meanwhile, regarding the far more destructive riots that occurred literally every night for months on end in Portland,

As the Biden administration has taken the reins of the Department of Justice, the feds have dismissed dozens of charges against violent rioters in Portland, Oregon. They have dropped charges such as assault on a law enforcement officer, arson, and other violent crimes. Many have been dropped with prejudice, meaning they can’t be re-litigated in the future. According to a local news outlet, federal prosecutors have dismissed more than one-third of the pending charges from last summer’s violent protests in Portland.

More dismissals are expected. It looks like few if any Antifa or Black Lives Matter thugs will still be imprisoned a year from now for crimes committed during the riots in Portland.

The Department of Justice stepped in as riots terrorized Portland throughout the summer of 2020, and Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced he would not prosecute most riot crimes committed in Portland. … Attorney General William Barr instructed federal prosecutors to aggressively pursue rioters across the country…

But with the ascension of Biden’s handlers to power, the same type of left-wing extremists who run Portland run the federal government.

As noted at Hot Air,

This looks less like an evidentiary problem and more like a political decision by the incoming administration. One has to wonder whether the Biden administration will treat the January 6 rioters with the same charity… [A]ttempts to pick and choose enforcement like this will only bring on more violence from the fringes on both sides.

This is not a bug but a feature. Political violence is all good, from the viewpoint of Biden’s handlers.

Violence by the Right will be inflated out of proportion and hyped by the media/Democrat Party. For example, only one person died violently in the Capitol Riot, and that was the unarmed Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by the police. Yet the liberal establishment continues to exploit it aggressively.

Violence by the Left intimidates people into silence and compliance, as radicals remake America into a very different country, in which the fundamental principle of equality before the law no longer exists.

On a tip from TCS III.

If Portland did not already exist, we would have to invent it, so as to demonstrate how crazy things can get when liberals are offered no resistance. The moonbats running the city are destroying a recycling plant in the name of climate piousness.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Portland declared a climate emergency last year, and the City Council voted to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet this goal that would have no effect on the climate, Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability wants to impose some $11 million in annual fees on city businesses. Facilities deemed “major stationary sources of air pollution” would pay an annual surcharge of up to $40,000, and Portland would also impose a per-ton fee on any facility that emits more than 2,500 metric tons of C02 a year.

Chuck Schumer has called for the White House to declare a climate emergency too, so that similar measures can be inflicted at the national level, scaled up to gargantuan size.

The carbon taxes would fall especially hard on Portland’s Owens-Brockway Glass Container plant, which handles all of the state’s glass-bottle recycling and processes the equivalent of 440,000 beer bottles a day on average. If the City Council adopts the proposal, the plant would have to pay an estimated $1.1 million a year, more than any Portland facility except the Evraz steel mill, according to the newspaper Willamette Week. The recycling plant pays $1.6 million in income, real-estate and property taxes.

When it goes under, that $1.6 million will have been lost because greedy bureaucrats demanded $1.1 million more.

The plant has 115 employees. Their tax contributions will be lost too when they join the swelling ranks of the eco-unemployed, putting Big Government even farther behind. Enviropolitics isn’t about numbers that add up. It is about striking poses while inflicting tyranny for its own sake.

Jules Bailey of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative said that if the plant went bust, the state’s glass bottles would end up in landfills or be shipped out of state.

Leftist pols are not concerned with improving the environment, or they would back nuclear energy. Better the garbage should end up floating in the sea than they should miss out on a chance to loot and persecute in the name of the planet.

The contradictions of progressive climate policy are multiplying, but one constant prevails: The costs fall on workers and consumers in return for no benefit for the climate.

However, the benefit of climate ideology to our rulers is immense. It may even allow them to impose the Great Reset.

On a tip from Varla.

The election must really be over. The well over 100 riots that have erupted in Portland since last spring having served their political purpose, Mayor Ted Wheeler is willing to put an end to them by calling in outside help:

Wheeler requested for federal, state, and county law enforcement “to convene to deal with anarchist violence as soon as possible.” He also asked for the state legislature to increase penalties for repeat offenders of criminal destruction and vandalism.

In the past, Wheeler has pandered to the leftist rioters, handcuffing the police and resisting outside assistance despite his obvious inability to handle the situation himself. He even blamed those who offered to help for creating “the hate and the division.”

Time will tell whether Democrats can get the Black Lives Matter/Antifa genie back in the bottle now that they have conjured it.

Hat tip: Not the Bee.

To get an idea of the depths to which moonbattery has sunk Portland, consider that it chooses to be ruled by people like City Council Member Jo Ann Hardesty. Hardesty is adamantly opposed to the police — except when she is calling them on a Lyft driver who just wants her to get out of his car:

Lyft and Uber drivers are warned: under no circumstances pick up members of the Portland City Council. It may not be easy to extract them from your vehicle.

On tips from Kate P, DCGere, and Pork_Soda.

Congratulations to Ted Wheeler, who was reelected Mayor of Portland. He is conspicuously awful at his job — allowing Antifa goons to rule the streets, presiding over more than 100 riots so far this year (and counting), refusing to take sides in the conflict between civilization and the anarchocommunist thugs burning down his city. Only New York’s Bill de Blasio could claim to be a worse mayor. But at least Wheeler isn’t his opponent Sarah Iannarone, who ran on the platform “I am Antifa.”

Maybe the reelected Ted Wheeler will be new and improved, as the Democrats running the region finally take some responsibility for maintaining public safety:

Wheeler may realize that the only reason he is still in office is that sane people who have not yet escaped Portland could not elect anyone better at this point. He is a moonbat, but circumstances have forced him onto the side of those who value law and order. Here’s what his fellow progressives think about him (sorry about the language):

Local media crows that Wheeler will be “the only straight white guy” on the City Council. Moonbats choose their candidates on the ostensible basis of not being straight white guys; this absolves candidates of lacking more meaningful qualifications. Their actual qualification in a place like Portland is that they are barking moonbats:

Looks like “police reform” will top the agenda. Buckle up for more anarchy.

If voter fraud fails to preserve Biden’s slim lead, the violence will be explosive — though only in the short term. Conversely, if Biden or rather Harris takes power, there will be encouragement from DC, so rioting in places like Portland will become the new normal until these cities dry up and die.

On tips from Kate P and Pork_Soda.

There is one good thing about Portland. At least it can’t get any worse. Under Antifa-friendly Mayor Ted Wheeler, the city has degenerated as far into moonbattery as could possibly be imagined, with riots taking place literally every night for months on end.

But wait; I forgot that no matter how far they push the envelope, progressives will always find a way to progress further still. Just because a sane person cannot imagine escalating the madness even further doesn’t mean a moonbat can’t.

You thought no one could be worse than Wheeler? Meet Portland mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone.

Via the Washington Examiner:

Iannarone was spotted wearing a skirt emblazoned with the images of communist dictators Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, as well as communist revolutionary Che Guevara.

How stylish:

Between the three of them, Mao, Stalin, and communist executioner Che Guevara killed tens of millions of people. In terms of body count, Mao is the evilest man who has ever lived; Stalin comes in second.

Iannarone’s campaign manager Gregory McKelvey openly identifies as a communist. Iannarone herself identifies as Antifa, literally proclaiming, “I am Antifa.”

At least she doesn’t leave anyone guessing as to which side she takes in the one-sided war between leftist terrorists and law enforcement. From her campaign website:

For weeks we witnessed Federal officers commit acts of violence against Portlanders in our streets… Before Trump’s secret police left the city, Portland’s current mayor failed for months to prevent Portland’s police from violently attacking journalists and protestors exercising their Constitutional rights. These failures represent a devastating reality that we must unseat in November. …

Under Wheeler’s watch, 71% of Portlanders do not have a high level of trust in the police, and 79% believe the PPB only sometimes, rarely, or never does a good job reducing or preventing crime. It is time to stop wasting money and stop putting good money after bad.

Portland is already a place where you might be shot in the street like Aaron Danielson for not being a leftist. Imagine the chaos after Iannarone defunds the police.

Reducing the budget of the PPB doesn’t mean there’s nobody there when you call for help. It means more funds available for the alternative types of assistance you may need. We have enough money to help everyone feel safe, and that money should be invested in better housing, transportation, education, health care, and social services that lead to real public safety.

When Marxists start burning your house down in the name of Black Lives Matter, you can call social services, and they will send around a social worker in a couple of weeks to chastise you for your racism.

Now for the really scary part. According to the polls, the communist crazy lady is going to win in a blowout:

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler trails his challenger Sarah Iannarone by 11 points, according to a poll of likely voters conducted by DHM Research on behalf of the Portland Business Alliance.

Some national polls have Biden up by even more.

If current trends are not reversed, Portland is our near future. Maybe it is a good thing that border wall never got finished, because the last sane people are going to want out of here.

On tips from Dragon’s Lair and Frances J.

When I mentioned earlier today that Black Lives Matter supporters are likely to engage in executions if they ever take power, I didn’t realize that executions may have already begun:

The man shot and killed in Portland as a pro-Trump caravan that began in nearby Clackamas wound down and altercations broke out was a “friend and supporter” of Vancouver, Washington-based Patriot Prayer, group leader Joey Gibson said. …

Andrew Duncomb, a conservative activist who was stabbed during a downtown demonstration July 29, also confirmed the victim was associated with the organization.

The victim reportedly did not have a gun.

The countermoonbat rally featured almost “1,000 vehicles, many of them displaying Trump, Gadsden and Thin Blue Line flags in addition to the U.S. flag.”

Supporting the President of the USA, American heritage, law enforcement, and America itself is now so provocative in parts of the country that it can get you killed.

Andy Ngo reports:

Whether they said, “We got a Trumper” is unclear. Other details also remain to be resolved. However, it appears that the left-wing political violence that has characterized the past 3 months has taken a great leap forward into straightforward murder.

Tim Pool puts this into the context of the lies being told about Kyle Rittenhouse and support for leftist terrorism by prominent Democrats:

Pool had better be right about Trump winning. Otherwise, the whole country could soon look like Portland and Kenosha. When the smoke clears, it will look like the Soviet Union.

On tips from Sean C, Rapinhoe, and Dragon’s Lair.

Left-wing Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has sided with Antifa against law-abiding citizens for years. He supports the Black Lives Matter cause. Even now, after 3 months of nightly riots, he refuses to let Trump restore order in his smoldering city. Here we see his reward for complying with the moonbat mob:

A group of Black Lives Matter protesters chained themselves together inside the lobby of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s condo on Friday night. The sit-in was part of a larger demonstration outside of Wheeler’s apartment, where approximately 150 people gathered to protest police brutality and racial inequality.

If having these lawless bullies attack their neighborhoods is good enough for regular citizens, it is good enough for Ted Wheeler.

The group vowed to stay locked inside the lobby until Wheeler heard their demands. The group left three hours later.

Three hours of sitting still pushes the limit of a BLM protester’s patience.

Their demands include cutting police funding by 50% by next year and abolishing the police bureau completely by the following year, so that total anarchy may reign. The money saved is to be redistributed on a racial basis to favored groups.

Also, they have a demand that may resonate with sane people: they want Wheeler to resign.

Protesters painted bloody red handprints on the windows of the lobby and put up signs that read: “Send Teddy to the Hague.”

When they have sufficient power, they won’t need the International Criminal Court in the Hague. They will just set up guillotines in the middle of the street, as they have already begun to do on a theatrical basis.

Agitators shined lights into the windows of the apartment building, and a metal band played live music outside the condos in an effort to not allow Wheeler to get sleep. The security at the condo reportedly called police, but authorities did not respond.

The police may have had more pressing concerns. Also last night, the mostly peaceful protesters set fire to the Portland Police Association building.

“Individuals wheeled multiple dumpsters into the road and lit at least one on fire. The fire was in the road and not threatening any structures. In the interest of deescalating the situation, Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers remained out of sight,” the Portland Police Bureau said. “However, arsonists put some debris, including a large mattress, against the front door of the building, appeared to spray accelerant on it, and lit it on fire. The flames appeared to engulf the front door area of the building and nearly reach the roofline.”

Want the whole country to look like Portland? Biden is your man.

Here’s why criminals need to cool their heels behind bars for a while, rather than be immediately released as has become the custom in places run by liberals:

On a tip from DCGere.

One reason the rioting goes on and on for months on end is that the liberal media provides propaganda support. Another reason is that liberals largely control the legal apparatus. That’s why we read stories like this:

An 18-year-old was sentenced Wednesday to three years of probation for his role in a fire set outside the Portland Police Bureau’s North Precinct during a tumultuous Black Lives Matter protest.

“A tumultuous Black Lives Matter protest” is media-ese for a particularly violent riot.

The case marks the first felony conviction for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office tied to the nightly demonstrations that began three months ago.

Nightly riots for 3 months straight and finally they have a felony conviction. The stern sentence of probation is sure to dissuade other rioters.

Rollin Tristan Fodor pleaded guilty to first-degree arson…

His court-appointed attorney, Alicia Hercher, said her client had attended multiple nights of protests against police violence and systemic racism in Portland “before he got caught up in this event.”

The mostly peaceful protests have become riots in Portland literally every night since May. Rollin must have figured that the odds were against the streak continuing. Once caught up in the event, he had no choice but to engage in arson, since individuals cannot be held responsible for their own behavior, per progressive ideology.

Rollin also faces a probation violation for an earlier robbery conviction. Funny how often the rioters, whom de facto presidential candidate Kamala Harris describes as a “new coalition of conscience” and “the heroes of our time,” have criminal records.

Speaking of arson and mostly peaceful protests on the Left Coast,

Seattle police officers were forced to kick their way out of an East Precinct exit door Monday night, after rioters jammed it with boards and rebar, and attempted to seal the door closed with quick-dry cement.

As the door was being jammed, surveillance video shows several other people building a fire outside the building near the exit door, in an attempt to set the building on fire.

Yet the media tells us the police are the bad guys, because they are “racist.”

On a tip from Chris Neilson.

The Democrat Party openly identifies with the rioters who have been tearing apart American cities, not just by refusing to criticize their outrageous behavior, but by pushily advocating their ideology and echoing their slogans. More so than ever, it has positioned itself as the anti-America party, because the rioters could not possibly be less subtle about their hatred for this country — or about their violent intentions. From Portland Saturday:

Rioters strode through residential streets with a teddy bear set up in a guillotine, burning American flags, and demanding sleeping residents afford them shelter and protection.

Given the nature of this crowd, “shelter and protection” probably means free marijuana in addition to free food and a place to crash after they tire themselves out hurling balloons full of human waste at the police. Those who fail to comply with demands may soon meet the fate of the teddy bear and wind up in the guillotine.

Guillotines have been a recurrent feature of the “mostly peaceful” protests. The unsubtle reference is to the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution. Rarely have revolutionaries been so forthright about their evil intentions. Yet the media, Corporate America, and the Democrat Party push their cause rather than jump back in horror.

The rioters then began burning American flags in the streets.

The mob made its way to the Penumbra Kelly Building, where it assaulted police officers with “rocks, frozen bottles of water, and laser pointers.” Police are targeted not because a criminal died in police custody last spring, but because they defend our civilization from those who would destroy it from within.

Open hatred for America went mainstream on the Left with Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform” the USA into a different country. From there, it has escalated into a rabid ecstasy of enmity, expressed by BLM/Antifa with the sophistication of psychotic children.

They may be absurd, but they have the liberal establishment on their side. This country has never faced a more implacable enemy.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket. Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.

You won’t see pushback against the recent surge of ultraleftism from major corporations (quite the contrary), but there has been some on the streets of Portland.

Right-wing groups organized a noon event yesterday at Terry Schrunk plaza with the currently controversial goal of “saying no to Marxism.” At the same time, the “Mother of All Back the Blue Rallies” took place at the Justice Center.

It would be unthinkable for Antifa to allow people they disagree with to demonstrate peaceably in Portland. Chaos predictably erupted:

[T]hroughout the morning and early afternoon, both sides fairly equally used a variety of weapons and tossed numerous objects at each other. …

After about an hour of the increasingly tense standoff, no police were present on the scene.

The marginalization of local law enforcement under liberal rule means armies clashing in broad daylight where civilization once flourished.

Yahoo News applied the predictable spin with this headline:

Trump Supporters and Anti-Racism Protesters Clash in Portland, Oregon

A more accurate headline might have read, “Supporters of Law Enforcement and America in General Clash With Racist Marxists and Anarchists.”

Comments are blocked on the Yahoo piece, lest the narrative be disrupted by noncompliant viewpoints.

On tips from Anonymous.

Moonbattery has consequences, as Portland learned after Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced that the rioters who have been tearing the city apart each night for over 2 months will mostly not be prosecuted:

Schmidt said his office will presumptively decline to prosecute those whose most serious accusation doesn’t involve deliberate property damage, theft or the use or threat of force against someone else. …

Those whose most serious accusation involves a city ordinance violation will also not be prosecuted.

You might wonder what point there is to having ordinances if everyone knows they aren’t enforced.

Even provably violent rioters could be handled or rather caressed with kid gloves:

Prosecutors will scrutinize the cases of protesters accused of resisting arrest or assaulting a public safety officer and consider “the chaos of a protesting environment, especially after tear gas or other less-lethal munitions have been deployed against community members en masse,” the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

This did not result in an end to the mayhem. It resulted in this:

Oregon State Police on Thursday pulled out the approximately 100 troopers helping both federal officers and Portland police in responding to nightly protests in the city that have often ended in confrontations with demonstrators and arrests.

Captain Timothy Fox explained why:

“We’re in a county that’s not going to prosecute this criminal behavior.”

Why put officers at risk to arrest criminals who aren’t going to be prosecuted?

The plan is to “move those resources back to counties where prosecution of criminal conduct is still a priority.” That is, out of Portland, where municipal authorities are sympathetic to the rioters.

Do not expect law and order to return to Portland soon.

Other consequences of moonbattery are more positive:

Voters in Georgia have ousted Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard — who charged two officers with murder in the Rayshard Brooks shooting earlier this summer — by a whopping 45-point margin.

Howard, a 20-plus-year incumbent and the first black district attorney elected in Georgia, lost his post to Democratic challenger Fani Willis in a runoff election Tuesday, WAGA-TV reported. Willis garnered 73% of the vote in a commanding victory over her former boss.

It may be corruption allegations that brought Howard down, but his overzealous prosecution of Officer Garrett Rolfe doesn’t seem to have helped him. He hit Rolfe with 11 counts including felony murder for shooting Rayshard Brooks, who had stolen an officer’s taser and fired it at police.

When the public wakes up from the surreal nightmare that is 2020, voters may inflict a widespread reckoning on left-leaning pols who egged on the chaos. Even liberal Portland voters may resent what has been allowed to happen to their city.

On tips from Mr. Freemarket and ABC of the ANC. Hat tips: Conservative Daily Post, The Blaze.

Anyone might accidently step on a rake so that the handle flies up and whacks them in the face. But to deliberately stomp on the rake and then be surprised by the consequences takes a special kind of stupid — which characterizes the moonbats running Oregon:

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) declared a state of emergency in Portland on Tuesday for a rising number of fentanyl deaths as some state Democrats move to roll back a drug decriminalization law.

It must not have occurred to Kotek et al. that decriminalizing recreational drugs would lead to more widespread use of them, inevitably resulting in turn in the accelerated decay of society.

The emergency declarations were a recommendation from a Portland task force last year, aimed at revitalizing the city’s downtown.

Anyone who really wants to reclaim Portland on behalf of civilization first needs to pry liberals out of power. Only then will the drug-fueled zombie apocalypse that has made Left Coast cities unlivable end.

Oregon has struggled with increasing overdoses in recent months, specifically from synthetic opioids, causing backlash against a 2020 law that decriminalized small amounts of most drugs.

The Democrats who have made fentanyl readily available throughout the country through lax drug and border policies are more responsible for the death of career criminal/liberal demigod George Floyd than Derek Chauvin is.

On a tip from Lyle.

Already liberals are officially codifying the racial caste system we live under. In deep blue Portland, government school educrats and unions officially agree that misbehaving students who are not black or ostentatiously sexually perverted must be punished more severely:

A new collective bargaining agreement between Portland Public Schools and its unionized teachers requires school officials to consider a disruptive student’s race, gender identity, and sexual orientation when crafting that student’s disciplinary plan.

When a student exhibits “continuous disruptive behavior,” the agreement says, school officials must develop a “support plan” for the student, which can include disciplinary measures such as detention. That plan “must take into consideration the impact of issues related to the student’s trauma, race, gender identity/presentation, sexual orientation … and restorative justice as appropriate for the student,” according to the agreement.

The agreement explicitly focuses disciplinary policy on “racial equity and social justice.” The objective is not to maintain order in the classroom, but to punish or reward students for their race.

The lunacy isn’t limited to Portland:

The policy change reflects a broader effort at both the federal and local levels to develop race-conscious disciplinary rules for public school students. Earlier this year, for example, the Biden administration released a memo urging schools to refrain from suspending students for truancy, arguing that “significant disparities by race … have persisted in the application of student discipline.” School districts in Washington and Illinois, meanwhile, have adopted disciplinary policies that aim to provide a “culturally responsive” and “restorative approach” to student discipline.

Lighter punishment for those most likely to misbehave will further disrupt classrooms. This is not a bug but a feature. Only when no one is able to learn anything can equity be imposed.

On a tip from Franco.