Tag: protests

‘I don’t think we’d have survived’: Rand Paul says police saved him and wife from ‘mob’ of DC protesters

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul feared that he and his wife would have been “pummeled” by protesters if police had not intervened as they left the White House and walked to a hotel following President Trump’s acceptance speech to end the Republican National Convention.

He told Fox and Friends on Friday morning that the city is no longer safe for Republicans like himself to be out walking.

“I regret that I made this decision, but I said we’ll walk the two blocks. We walked one block, but as we walked one block, we could see some police in the distance, but we also saw a mob of about 30 people marching and yelling. They all of a sudden saw me — right as we got to the police, fortunately, or I don’t think we would have survived,” Paul said.

The senator said the crowd swelled to more than 100 protesters, some of whom shouted profanities and threats at the couple. At least one officer used his bike to push back the mob.

“They were shouting threats, you know, to us, to kill us, to hurt us, but they’re also saying, shouting, ‘Say her name, Breonna Taylor.’ And it’s like, you couldn’t reason with this mob. But I’m actually the author of the Breonna Taylor law to end no-knock raids, so the irony is lost on these idiots that they’re trying to kill the person who’s actually trying to get rid of no-knock raids. […] You’ve seen the pictures of what they do to you,” Paul said.

Keep reading

‘Mostly Peaceful’ Rioting And Looting Is Helping Trump’s Campaign

‘Mostly peaceful protests’ are like the ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria – propaganda constructs that do not exist in the real world. The people who owned the burning cars and who’s businesses were destroyed will not be relieved by such phrasing.

Joe Biden’s attempt to swing Republican voters to his side has failed. At the same time he has rejected many of the issues progressives favored. This will hurt the election turn out the Democrats will need. Add to that the unrest which plays into Trump’s hands. The Democrats who fear that are right:

“There’s no doubt it’s playing into Trump’s hands,” said Paul Soglin, who served as mayor of Madison, on and off, for more than two decades. “There’s a significant number of undecided voters who are not ideological, and they can move very easily from Republican to the Democratic column and back again. They are, in effect, the people who decide elections. And they are very distraught about both the horrendous carnage created by police officers in murdering African Americans, and … for the safety of their communities.”

Trump, of course, is positioning himself as the antidote to urban unrest. “So let me be clear: The violence must stop, whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha,” Vice President Mike Pence declared in his Republican convention speech Wednesday night, with Trump looking on. “We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.”

Republicans had chided Joe Biden and other Democrats for not calling out the violence in the aftermath of the Blake shooting. Biden immediately addressed the shooting, but didn’t condemn the ensuing violence until Wednesday in a video posted on social media.

Keep reading

CNN’s Cuomo: Being Allowed to Protest and Being Allowed to Go to Church Have ‘Nothing to Do with the Other’

During CNN’s coverage of the 2020 Republican National Convention on Monday, CNN host Chris Cuomo stated that protesting and church attendance have “nothing to do” with each other and protests are “people who are responding in this country to outrageous acts of social injustice. To say, well, it’s the same as going to church, no, it isn’t.” And that “you would have chaos” if you told people you couldn’t protest.

Keep reading

Black Lives Matter Supporters Run Over and Brutally Beat Raccoon to Death, Claim Only White People Worry About Animals

Black Lives Matter supporters ran over a raccoon twice before beating it to death with a baseball bat and posting it online in a horrific act of animal cruelty.

The incident took place in New York City, as onlookers watched and cheered.

The alleged niece of one of the monsters who did it wrote that “only white peoples worry about this.”

Keep reading

With Chicago police already stretched thin, Mayor Lightfoot stations over 100 cops outside home, bans protests on her block to protect herself

The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday that the city has effectively banned all protests on Lightfoot’s street, including peaceful ones, even as elsewhere in the city protests have been allowed to continue and openly supported by the mayor.

According to an email sent by the district’s commander at the time, officers assigned to enforce the directive were instructed to tell protesters “that it is against the city code and state law to protest” and that they must “leave immediately.”

After the warning is given, the street “should be locked down,” the instructions added.

In order to carry out the orders, a large contingent of officers have been routinely stationed outside the home. Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told the Chicago Sun-Times that as many as 140 officers have been assigned to the home at certain times.

Keep reading

Tennessee governor signs bill increasing punishments for certain protests

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) quietly signed a bill into law ramping up punishments for certain kinds of protests, including losing the right to vote.

The GOP-controlled state General Assembly passed the measure last week during a three-day special legislative session and was signed without an announcement earlier this week.

Among other things, the new law stipulates that people who illegally camp on state property will face a Class E felony, punishable by up to six years in prison. People found guilty of a felony in Tennessee lose the right to vote. 

The new law also slaps a mandatory 45-day sentence for aggravated rioting, boosts the fine for blocking highway access to emergency vehicles and enhances the punishment for aggravated assault against a first responder to a Class C felony. 

Keep reading

Two-Year-Old Cancer Patient Misses Birthday Celebration Due To Chicago Looters Targeting Ronald McDonald House

During the mass mayhem and looting in Chicago earlier this week, looters targeted the Ronald McDonald House, a charity that provides a place for families with sick children to stay close to hospitals.

One of the families staying at the Chicago Ronald McDonald House is the family of two-year-old Owen Buell, who is receiving treatment at Lurie Children’s Hospital for Stage 4 neuroblastoma.

The family planned to bring their sick baby to Joliet to celebrate his birthday, but were unable to do so thanks to the violent riot.

“We were going to have cake and ice cream and do some presents at home with his siblings and his grandma,” Owen’s mother, Valerie Mitchell, told local station WBBM.

Keep reading

We Need a Principled Anti-Lockdown Movement

Shell-shocked is a good way to describe the mood in the U.S. for a good part of the Spring of 2020. Most of us never thought it could happen here. I certainly did not, even though I’ve been writing about pandemic lockdown plans for 15 years. I knew the plans were on the shelf, which is egregious, but I always thought something would stop it from happening. The courts. Public opinion. Bill of Rights. Tradition. The core rowdiness of American culture. Political squeamishness. The availability of information. 

Something would prevent it. So I believed. So most of us believed. 

Still it happened, all in a matter of days, March 12-16, 2020, and boom; it was over! We were locked down. Schools shut. Bars and restaurants closed. No international visitors. Theaters shuttered. Conferences forcibly ended. Sports stopped. We were told to stay home and watch movies…for two weeks to flatten the curve. Then two weeks stretched to five months. How lucky for those who lived in the states that resisted the pressure and stayed open, but even for them, they couldn’t visit relatives in other states due to quarantine restrictions and so on. 

Lockdowns ended American life as we knew it just five months ago, for a virus that 99.4-6% of those who contract it shake off, for which the median age of death is 78-80 with comorbidities, for which there is not a single verified case of reinfection on the planet, for which international successes in managing this relied on herd immunity and openness. 

Still the politicians who had become dictators couldn’t admit such astonishing failure so they kept the restrictions in place as a way of covering up what they had done. 

Keep reading